PETER PERRETT @ SCALA, LONDON

Following last year’s studio release of ‘The Cleansing’, Peter Perrett continued to tour his new and older solo and band material. His new album plays with fresh contemporary ideas like assisted suicide in opening track, ‘I Wanna Go in Dignity’; Peter played guitar and was assisted by his son Jamie Perrett on lead guitar with plenty of pedal effects.

The band then performed the grungy crank of ‘The Big Sleep’, from The Only Ones’ 1980 third studio album, ‘Baby’s Got a Gun’, filled with Jamie’s guitar solos akin to a CAN instrumental and another from the same album, ‘Oh Lucinda (Love Becomes a Habit)’, with Jamie’s sliding blues guitar. Peter included a rare cover of ‘Miles from Nowhere’, which his band performed on the Peel sessions originally recorded back in 1977-80 and eventually released in 1989.

He also selected heavily from his 2017 debut solo album, ‘How the West was Won’, with the Banshees-like spidery creep of ‘Living in my Head’ complete with a dual guitar solo. Peter hesitated halfway through the set worrying about whether he could get through it, but cheered on by the audience he persevered onto the new album track, ‘Mixed Up Confucius’, his voice slightly softer now against Jamie’s reeling, skidding guitar interchanges. He returned to Only Ones material with the band’s debut album opener, ‘The Whole of the Law’: a short two-minute track crafted to perfection also showing his voice is still as mellifluent as it’s ever been.

Coming after his arrest in August for supporting Palestine Action and as an outspoken musician not afraid to air his views on the genocide, Peter declared, “Our country is being stolen, it’s happening all through so-called ‘western civilisation’…a certain type of fascism has arrived and I’m proud to be Jewish – I’m proud to be self-hating and I hate fucking Zionism” before launching into the choppy ‘War Plan Red’ from his second solo album ‘Humanworld’ with its whirring guitars and siren effects. The band ended their set on the trio-guitar noise and feedback of ‘The Beast’, again inspired by CAN. They performed an encore which included ‘Take Me Home’ from Peter’s debut solo album, featuring soaring shoegaze guitar, and his newest single, ‘Disinfectant’, although the guitar could have been pushed further.

24/10/25: Peter Perrett @ Scala, London.