Failure Not Success

Eternal cynic that he is, Billy Childish is just the man who would name an album Failure Not Success, though by any creative standpoint, hes been as consistently successful as any man in rock & roll since the late 1970s. How many people have made over 150 albums and can honestly say the significant majority of them are actually good? Just as remarkably, after more than 45 years of making music, Childish hasnt come close to losing his touch, and 2023s Failure Not Success, cut with his combo Wild Billy Childish & CTMF, is practically a catalog of what he does well. You get some gutsy garage rock ("Come into My Life"), lyrically confessional glimpses into his soul ("Failure Not Success"), blues-based stompers ("Becoming Unbecoming Me"), great, fuzzed-out guitar instrumentals ("Walk of the Sasquatch"), broadsides on rock culture ("Bob Dylans Got a Lot to Answer For"), and stripped-down, reverent covers (Richard Hells "Love Comes in Spurts" and Jimi Hendrixs "Fire"). This isnt radically different from the typical Billy Childish album, but part of what makes him interesting is both what he does and how he does it. Childish has a formula, and its fueled with passion and a furious commitment to his aesthetic, and he pours sweaty conviction into his work every time he takes the stage or enters the studio. His guitar style is elemental and full-bodied, and he can take on Hendrix and Robert Quines leads and effectively graft them to his lo-fi worldview. He can rearrange the basic building blocks of garage-leaning rock in an almost infinite variety of ways without losing sight of what makes them connect. Hes also a fearless songwriter who can share childhood trauma, boldly proclaim his love, or consider the pros and cons of some of rocks most legendary artists with unpretentious intelligence and wit. How many other people in rock & roll can do all that, cram it onto a 37-minute LP, and make it fun at the same time? Billy Childish is one of rock & rolls most distinctive talents and fearless thinkers as well as being a strongman who makes Robert Pollard look lazy; Failure Not Success will remind fans of why theyre lucky to have him around, and its a better-than-average way to introduce newbies to his creative world. ~ Mark Deming