John Lydon releases his post-punk project’s 11th album, “End of World”. If anyone has the credible world-weariness with which to criticize a doomed planet in the present day, it’s John Lydon. On “End of World”, this his 11th album with Public Image Ltd, Lydon’s euphoric, dance-driven, sketchy, surround-sound environment—co-created with Scott Firth, Lu Edmonds, and ex-Slits/Pop Group drummer Bruce Smith cattily captures the frontman tackling silly social media millennialism “Being Stupid Again”, false, witless friends “L F C F”, and the literal and figurative divisiveness that makes the 21st century turn “Walls”.
You could write all this off to Lydon’s legendary contrarian snark if it wasn’t for the fact that his so-called conservative streak may have become more common-sensical than Trumpian, and that his many operatic, abstract voices on “End of World” convey surprisingly moving emotions beyond cutting social or personal criticism. The tenderness of album closer “Hawaii” and its farewell to his wife of 44 years (Nora Forster, lost to struggles with Alzheimer’s back in April) would tear your heart out if it wasn’t for its sweet, strange island allure. As PiL’s death disco rambles behind him in the mix, Lydon turns “End of World” into a hypothetical, philosophical treatise on all that we may miss when our Earth disappears.
It’s 13 songs, they all deal with very varied subjects to the best of our ability. This is how we view the world. If you choose to analyze it or tear it apart with any degree of intellectual idiocy, you’re doing it wrong, merely entertaining yourself.
In conversation from his home in Malibu, on the day of his friend and Sex Pistol graphic artist Jamie Reid’s death, Lydon takes no prisoners—and is all the more entertaining for it. After having interviewed him at least a dozen times since PiL’s start (to say nothing of him having snagged my pack of Marlboros at Studio 54 back in the day—but that’s another story), Lydon isn’t about to let this interview be at all precious. “You’re very pompous, aren’t you,” he says, laughing. “You’re all right,” Lydon says. “But I really believe you’ve overthunk the whole thing.”
The Fat Angel Sings 