Record Rebound: Julian Cope reissues ‘World Shut Your Mouth’ 40 years later
In the summer of 1977, three promising young musicians formed a punk band in Liverpool named Crucial Three. The band lasted only six weeks before dissolution but remains a towering figure in the city’s rich musical history. This is because, true to the name, the three members proved crucial creatives in subsequent bands: frontman Ian McCulloch formed Echo and the Bunnymen, guitarist Pete Wylie formed Wah! And Julian Cope formed The Teardrop Explodes.
Of the Crucial Three, McCulloch achieved the most commercial attention thanks to a prolific run throughout the 1980s. However, the Cult of Cope is not to be underestimated. With The Teardrop Explodes, Cope soared to national fame as an eccentric, LSD-addled dynamo behind the enduring 1980 debut album Kilimanjaro. The band only lasted two more years, during which lineup shuffles, drug abuse and poor commercial reception for Wilder hammered three nails into a coffin.
Throughout the 1980s, Cope trudged slowly through the early chapters of a solo career. To the press and the broader public, he was deemed another “acid casualty” akin to Syd Barrett. Yet the artist was active and produced plenty of accessible neo-psychedelic solo material during this period. It seemed Cope was happy to maintain a strong cult following to whom he could preach and growl during rapturous live performances.
When Cope released his two solo masterpiece albums, Peggy Suicide and Jehovahkill, in the early 1990s, he was in the form of his career. Still, a decade of peripheral activity meant these records failed to reach the global masses as they should. At least the critics had their heads screwed on, for the most part.
These 1990s triumphs often serve as gateways to Cope’s immersive catalogue for the young listener, and for good reason. Next, I would direct the newcomer to the artist’s early solo work on World Shut Your Mouth and Fried, two underappreciated masterpieces. Both albums turn 40 years old this year, and in celebration, Cope has announced a round of reissues.
Cope’s debut solo album, World Shut Your Mouth, mainly followed in the neo-psychedelic footsteps of The Teardrop Explodes’ latter material. The eccentric energy remained, but as he embarked on this new chapter, Cope was a touch more introspective in his concepts and compositionally avant-garde.
Just two of the songs, ‘Metranil Vavin’ and ‘Pussyface’, had been written during the closing days of Teardrop. Otherwise, Cope wrote most of the album during a recuperative retreat in rural Drayton Bassett, near his childhood home in Tamworth. Among the reflective songs on the album is the five-minute highlight ‘Head Hang Low’, which resides somewhere between lonesome despair and psychedelic rapture.
Cope grounded the record elsewhere with two singles, ‘Sunshine Playroom’ and ‘Greatness and Perfection’. The former is a dynamic and alluring song that, in keeping with Cope’s outlook, tumbles through classical string movements and jarring injections of lyrical momentum. Apart from that, these elements are commonplace, but together, they shine with that Copian originality. Meanwhile, ‘Greatness and Perfection’ runs with a more conventional jangle-pop aura, but against the backdrop of such an eclectic album, it seems far from The Smiths’ contemporary material.
Julian Cope will reissue World Shut Your Mouth on 180g black vinyl on Friday, June 14th. A reissue for Fried is also scheduled for July 12th. You can view purchase options here.
