The New York Dolls were once quite important to me, and have remained so, impressions to the contrary stemming only from my making time to listen to other things because spending your entire life obsessively listening to just one band is fucking nuts, obviously. Despite which, I never got around to properly hearing the Heartbreakers until this year, even though I liked everything I'd heard and was pretty sure they would be right up my street. I plead poverty and there once having been so many records I liked at any one time that I never could have bought them all.
Anyway, this being reissued reminded me of its having existed and so here I am. The reissue was inspired by someone having found the master tapes and given the thing a decent mix, because apparently the rest of you have been listening to the shit version all these years. That's what it says on the cover. I haven't heard the shit version, although the announcement reminds me a little of claims regarding the muddy quality of the first two Dolls albums, both of which sound fantastic to me, so who knows?
LAMF is an older, slightly wiser, less hysterical Dolls captured at about three in the morning after the weirder drugs have mostly worn off, just before everyone gets their second wind. Some bloke on the internet described it as the greatest rock 'n' roll album of all time, which seems fair, despite it not being Machine Gun Etiquette. Listening to this, it's not difficult imagining the Heartbreakers sharing a stage with the Pistols and the Damned. It's bluesier, definitely New York spawned, and pops and crackles with a breezily spiky energy that probably shouldn't be possible given how much arm candy was allegedly involved.
Honestly, every last song is pure spun gold, although the review probably could have been left at features Born to Lose because I'm not sure you even need further information, and I don't even want to think about the sort of person who would. The Heartbreakers were the opposite of ELO, and I don't know if there can be any higher recommendation.
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