The third and final Pink Fairies studio album, Kings of Oblivion, welcomed guitarist Larry Wallis to the brew, bringing with him some of the band's most remarkable -- and concise -- material yet. The opening "City Kids," famously recut by Motörhead during Wallis' sojourn with that band, is as dynamic an opener as the Pink Fairies ever had, while the album's two epics, "I Wish I Was a Girl" and "Street Urchin," similarly catch the band as they made a sharp turn away from the rockin' riff jam basics that scarred their second LP, What a Bunch of Sweeties, and moved instead into the affirmative guttercat stance that so effectively predicted the rudiments of punk rock. Indeed, if any album could be said to have been born ahead of its time, Kings of Oblivion, conceived in 1973 but sounding just like 1977, is it. In common with the rest of the remastered Pink Fairies albums, Kings of Oblivion divides its bonus tracks between unfamiliar versions of familiar material (most pressingly, an urgent alternate mix of "City Kids") and non-album material. This includes two versions of the loping "Well Well Well" and the country rock-ish "Hold On" dating from 1972, and a single cut with Wallis' short-lived predecessor, Mick Wayne, and it's gratifying to have them on CD at last. Truly, though, Kings of Oblivion could exist just as happily without the extras; greeted at the time as the Pink Fairies' best album, it remains a tightly coiled, furiously adrenalined beast, the summation of everything that the Pink Fairies promised and all that subsequent reunions have continued to deliver.
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