Anyway, the horribly named Punishment of Luxury – I wonder who bought their fine gear? – sputtered around for a bit during the last half of the seventies, forming prior to that magical and aforementioned year. They’re still a post-punk group and all that it entails – jiggered rhythms, chopped up guitars high strung singing. It is all it’s cracked up to be, but not too much more.
Before delving in to the group’s history, my guess was that these guys listened to Devo a bit too much. But getting together prior to the release of Q: Are We Not Men? A: We Are Devo precludes that thought. And really that sort of explanation would only hint at a surface understanding of what the band’s Laughing Academy actually is.
By the time listeners make it through to “Obsession,” one of the countless tracks pushing beyond the four minute mark, it becomes clear that the synthesizer and PoL’s adherence to fey melodies usurped any sort of tie to the American conception of punk. So, it actually becomes an odd and all encompassing quandary as to why the group depicts itself in the terms it does on the cover of this album.
The pervasive aesthetic punk jived with had to do with the futility of it all and if not total annihilation, then some sort of destruction rendering society as they understood it nil. Bandying ideas that concern censorship and the trough that counts as life on its cover belies the music – if not the lyrics – held within. It’s a common center for a disconnect. Imagery and music are forever tied. There’s a reason everyone can draw Elvis shaking his hips – and a reason why the Clash co-opted the over of one of his albums for their own uses. But there’s more energy spilling out from the image on Laughing Academy than there is power from its music. Whatever. There’s a market for this tripe and we have to all make peace with it.