Wild Billy Childish & CTMF: Acorn Man

Medway legend does what he does best.

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Billy Childish has been steaming ahead for nearly 40 years, releasing albums at an absurd rate of knots (125 and counting) while also finding time for myriad projects as an author, painter and poet.

The fact that his music hasn’t changed much – splenetic blasts of garage-punk that owe as much to Nuggets as Live At the Roxy – only serves to shore up his self-styled reputation as a “radical traditionalist”.

Acorn Man is another gloriously unrefined bunch of songs, full of vim, vigour and humour. Sharing vocals with bassist wife Nurse Julie, He Wore A Pagan Robe and It’s So Hard To Be Happy are as belligerent as anything we’ve come to expect.

Best of all is Punk Rock Enough For Me, which sees Childish run off a list of inspirations (Lead Belly, The 101’ers, John Fante, The Beatles in Hamburg) in his distinctive Chatham tones./o:p

Rob Hughes

Freelance writer for Classic Rock since 2008, and sister title Prog since its inception in 2009. Regular contributor to Uncut magazine for over 20 years. Other clients include Word magazine, Record Collector, The Guardian, Sunday Times, The Telegraph and When Saturday Comes. Alongside Marc Riley, co-presenter of long-running A-Z Of David Bowie podcast. Also appears twice a week on Riley’s BBC6 radio show, rifling through old copies of the NME and Melody Maker in the Parallel Universe slot. Designed Aston Villa’s kit during a previous life as a sportswear designer. Geezer Butler told him he loved the all-black away strip.