Besides their various albums, {|Harry Pussy|} had a slew of singles and one-offs floating around during their tempestuous existence, mostly coming from their crazed-as-heck live performances. {|You'll Never Play in This Town Again|} serves as a catch... Read more

Besides their various albums, {|Harry Pussy|} had a slew of singles and one-offs floating around during their tempestuous existence, mostly coming from their crazed-as-heck live performances. {|You'll Never Play in This Town Again|} serves as a catch-all for a number of these, mostly from work done in 1997. While it's a slew of songs, they're all drawn from four separate sessions in 1997, two studio dates, one in January and one in May, plus a live show in Florida in May as well as a lengthy improvisation from a show in Chicago in April, Live at Salon Zwerge. The fact that the band covered {|Orphans|} by {|Teenage Jesus & the Jerks|} as their concluding number at the Florida show is a pretty clear statement of purpose on the one hand -- the songs' short running times, confrontational rage and general rock-as-blunt-explosion approach certainly confirms their admitted debt to no wave. Certainly moments like the dank, chiming guitars from {|Dan Hosker|} and {|Bill Orcutt|} on the first studio version of {|Mandolin|} are almost a tribute to early {|Sonic Youth|} more than anything else. But there's an even more intense atmosphere on nearly every track, a sheer power that is all its own. {|Adris Hoyos|}' vocals, meanwhile, aren't simply trying to clone {|Lydia Lunch|}'s or any other forerunner's -- there's a strength and spit to her declamatory statements that are hers alone, sometimes most evident in how she cuts through and works with the arrangements, as on {|Lost|} from the January session. Alternately she can just as easily take it low-key, as the near spoken word {|Peace of My Ass|} shows, or just find her own voice in the most extreme way -- {|Mic Check|} is just that, and the sounds she makes are breathtakingly intense (and then complemented by the amusing chat and more at the end). Meanwhile, when the band as a whole turns {|Kraftwerk|}'s {|Showroom Dummies|} into a trebly feedback smash, it's reinvention and then some. ~ Ned Raggett Less