"End Of World": Public Image Limited's new release

Lydon at his tenderest, and also his most reactionary.

    There is an episode of The Simpsons in which Moe Szyslak - the grouchy, cantankerous landlord of Moe’s Tavern - is revealed to shut his bar on Wednesdays so that he can read books to sick children and homeless people. So keen is Moe to maintain his grumpy image that when Ned Flanders recognizes him and commends his Christian deeds, Moe threatens Ned with murder.

One can see a parallel with the grouchy, cantankerous John Lydon. The sneering, misanthropic face of punk cynicism - the consistently furious contrarian who loves taking potshots at bleeding heart liberals while supporting Trump and Brexit - has actually spent much of the last decade as the sole carer for his wife Nora as she struggled with Alzheimer’s.

These two different Lydons finally converged earlier this year when Public Image Limited released “Hawaii”, a song that was submitted - rather astonishingly - as Ireland’s entry in the 2023 Eurovision Song Contest (Islington-born Lydon has long maintained an Irish passport, based on his parents being born in County Cork). His song didn’t succeed - the Irish jury preferred a sub-Coldplay number by Wild Youth, which didn’t even make it out of the semi-final - but “Hawaii” has become something of an anthem for the Alzheimer’s Society. When Nora Foster died in April 2023, aged 80, it took on an added poignancy.

Over a dreamy, Martin Denny-meets-Pink Floyd backdrop, the narrator is showing his dementia-addled partner photos of an old holiday destination, something she greets with a knowing smile. “Don't fly too soon/No need to cry, in pain/ You are loved/Again, again”.

While Lydon can do tenderness, he can't really metabolize comedy in quite the same way. The album’s main talking point seems to be “Being Stupid Again”, a piece of mutant disco that takes aim at “woke” politics in universities. To be fair, mocking absurdity in academia is like shooting fish in a barrel, particularly if you’re familiar with theorists like Jacques Lacan or Judith Butler. But Lydon’s lyrics somehow miss the target; an unfocused mix of 1970s hippie slogans (“Ban the bomb! Save the whale! Give peace a chance!") and digs at 21st-century social justice warriors (“All maths is racist!").

“The Do That’’ is another bit of doggerel poking fun at 21st-century puritans. “I won't do this and I won't do that/And I won't eat fat and I won't talk that", Lydon rants, his tiresome grumbling somewhat rescued by a rather fab glam-rock shuffle beat that recalls “Tiger Feet” by Mud.

    That grumpy old man air continues with “Walls”, a gleefully reactionary defence of boundaries. Anyone calling for a border-free world or unrestricted immigration is dismissed as an idiot: “Your ignorance will be your fall from grace... no-one will respect your space/How can you not know this ”. It is Trump’s “build that wall!” slogan or the Brexiteers’ “Britain is full” rhetoric turned into song.

Even the fury that is Lydon’s default mode can become excruciating. "Pretty Awful” is a piece of bubblegum punk that seems to direct its ire towards attractive women with horrible personalities.

    The funk rock of “LFCF” (“Liars, Fakes, Cheats, Frauds") is another furious tirade directed at an old enemy. “You cannot write what I write/You cannot do what I do/So I left you with no respect from any of you”. It starts to sound very much like one of his old rants about Malcolm McLaren.

The better tracks are ones where Lydon stops grumbling about the modem world and creates his own mythic universe, both lyrically and musically. “North West Passage” is a piece of gothic metal that conjures up images of a perilous Arctic mission. “Penge" is a wonderfully doomy slice of sludge rock that reimagines that shabby south London neighbourhood as the site of a full-on Viking invasion; all warrior drums and howling calls to arms. 

“End Of The World” continues the martial spirit, in the same key, with guitarist Lu Edmonds playing an incendiary metal riff that mutates into the tune from “Shortnin’ Bread” while Lydon howls (“no sound of the coward should ever be heard/This is the end of the world/No surrender"). “Strange" is a Celtic hymn to nature; even better is “Down On The Clown", a hypnotic celebration of rain set to a tribal drum beat, oddly reminiscent of Peter Gabriel’s “Red Rain”.

Best of all is “Car Chase" - a pulsating piece of punky rave with a weirdly Arabic- sounding microtonal guitar riff - which seems to be told from the point of view of a patient in a mental hospital. “They let me out at the weekend, "howls the narrator. “I don't get bothered/I don't get bored/I get ignored". It presents a horrific situation with empathy, and also manages to be musically thrilling. Lydon is one of those contrary, furious figures who could, like Morrissey, be “cancelled” for his opinions, but tracks like this show he can be a much more nuanced and powerful poet when he wishes.