Second Edition

Famously originally released in the UK as Metal Box, three 12" singles snugly packaged in an embossed film canister, most fans know these songs as the more conventional double LP Second Edition. (For what it's worth, vinyl fetishists and other tiring types have always claimed that Metal Box sounds much better due to the hotter mastering endemic to 12" singles.) As the years go by and these formerly avant-garde sounds become entrenched as a frequently-cited influence on new generations of indie bands, an interesting shift has taken place: in 1979, John Lydon was the only reason anyone cared about Public Image Ltd., and then mostly because of his previous life as Sex Pistols frontman Johnny Rotten. But in retrospect, Lydon was clearly the fourth-most-important member of the quartet, after bassist Jah Wobble, guitarist Keith Levene and whichever of the album's three drummers is playing on any given track, in that order. The dub-inspired boom and echo of Wobble's basslines, Levene's brittle, metallic guitar sound and the krautrock-like focus on repetition and drones drew two of the key progressive forms of the pre-punk '70s into post-punk's toolkit. In that way, Second Edition is a lot like Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band: other post-punk bands had similar ideas, and some of them did them better, but PiL's higher profile brought them to the widest audience. That songs like "Swan Lake" and "Albatross" eventually led to the Yeah Yeah Yeahs should not be held against this post-punk touchstone.