A siren sounds in the background as Knox, lead singer and principal writer for the Vibrators, analyzes his feelings toward London girls. It's one of those two-note sirens familiar to early Hitchcock fans, and it leads into the guitar solo (itself a shrewd and speedy play on the interval), which ends on a shrieking high note. Traditional, but apt. Though the Vibrators are connoisseurs of the immediate effect (the finale of "Baby Baby" satisfies because they turn the volume up—way up), they are also the craftsmen of punk. The Sex Pistols and the Clash fit the music to the feeling: the Vibrators fit the music to the words.

Pure Mania works on the pleasure principle to a large extent; we're not going to be edified or evangelized or given the inside story on Britain's social ills in "You Broke My Heart" or "Wrecked on You," but that's all right with me. Much of the album is dildo music: highly developed technique in the service of pure and impersonal lust. As such, it is both tremendously satisfying and short-lived. In the sense that the Vibrators are out to drive us crazy without going crazy themselves, their control is a limitation—the difference between passion and mechanical stimulation—and it separates them from the Sex Pistols and the Clash. But not by much. Though the Vibrators' concerns are more limited, they contain the same all-and-nothing perspective.

This band sneers with a Jaggeresque mix of self-mocking swagger and assumed modesty, but its real forte is a conscious absurdity that never quite becomes parody. The Beach Boys of Piccadilly Circus, the Vibrators produce stunning bits of logic like "Used to be things were so neat Can't spend my life out on the street" ("London Girls"). There's so much detachment in the deadpan snarl (and such intensity in the delivery and the music) that you're forbidden not to take them seriously. Which is a problem, because I'd be more comfortable taking "I Need a Slave," say, as a joke. The brutal beat and feral voices are cathartic—all threat and thunder—but these guys are singing quite sincerely about treating women like shit. And vet, I'd rather be offended by the Vibrators than soothed by Stevie Nicks. Perched on the edge between awareness and avowal, the group encompasses both.

"Keep It Clean" preaches against drugs over a metallic guitar that recalls the Velvet Underground's "Heroin." It warns against "razor blades, whips and chains" on an LP that celebrates "Whips & Furs" and physical abuse; the soft, insinuating chorus sounds more cynical than helpful when repeated over the jerky rhythm. There's irony at work here, and an implicit commentary on the band's own manipulations of the commercial interest in punk and the assumptions of the scene itself. The Vibrators do keep their business—the music—clean, however sleazy their pose. But, by examining their infatuation with control, they're able to raise it from a mere obsessional device into a kind of sensibility. At their best, they achieve the double vision of irony without the ironist's emotional detachment. Pure Mania kicks hard—like a Zen master—in order to enlighten. And if you don't want to think about it, you can dance to it just as well.

The Vibrators are out to drive us crazy. (RS 262)

ARIEL SWARTLEY