Here’s a first: mentioning Gang Of Four in a Gang Of Four review.
Along with Eno, Can and Wire, the exhaustively cited Leeds band exist in a rarefied zone of musicians who, despite miniscule sales, have managed to exert massive influence, as much for what they represent as how they actually sounded.
Musically, their marriage of harsh, serrated guitar riffs with chugging funk basslines has long been acknowledged as providing a critical (and lucratively-plundered) avenue out of the punk rock ghetto for everyone from New Order to the Chili Peppers to Rage Against The Machine.
Lyrically, their eagerness to address socio-political matters and cultural theory pricked up the ears of a young Richey Edwards.
The ambivalently titled Return The Gift (is that a threat or a promise?) is, as you would imagine from a band that you could almost mistake for a bunch of rowdy social science postgrads, an almost academic exercise. Neither a ‘best of’ nor a collection of new material (the 14 tracks on the first CD are re-recordings of old songs); it’s a record that forces you to recontextualise the band’s work – asking questions about how their critiques of Thatcher’s Britain retain relevance in Blair-weary days.
In the case of ‘I Love A Man In Uniform’, ‘At Home He’s A Tourist’ and the peerless ‘To Hell With Poverty’, uncomfortable parallels are allowed to hang in the air like trussed-up dictators. These are brutal, thrilling and intellectually challenging songs with a level of seriousness that – the Manics’ Holy Bible aside – few other acts have dared approach.
An accompanying CD made up of remixes from pallid acolytes such as The Dandy Warhols, Ladytron and (laughably) The Others, is almost a grim joke; the contemporary acts audibly wilting in the face on GoF’s ferocious onslaught.
Return the gift, Andy Gill and co seem to be sneering. Or else.