Had this been released before the interminably detained Throbbing Gristle album, Part Two - The Endless Not, it might have retained some of the potent momentum from that legendary quartet's unexpected and bizarrely protracted reunion. Yet after years of delay, the reconstituted Psychic TV's unremarkable return to disc seems barely worthy of a dismissive shrug.
As someone who first discovered and embraced this outrageously underestimated project a good decade ago, I found myself initially more drawn to Genesis P-Orridge's larger-than-life showmanship (shamanship?) than that of his peers' post-TG output. While I have since come to love Coil and Chris & Cosey for entirely different reasons, there was just something about Gen's knack for dissonant accessibility, whether in the cultish musings of Dreams Less Sweet or the alternative pop of Allegory and Self or the hyperdelic rave-o-lutionary Towards The Infinite Beat. In those more impressionable times, I ardently collected as much of his work as I could afford, and would have gladly followed this pied piper of the counterculture to the ends of the earth. After his tragic injury in the '90s, I assumed that the opportunity for any more Psychic TV material was a pipedream, until 2003 when I learned of a concert from his dormant band. Calling itself PTV3, this new bunch did not include Alexander Fergusson, Larry Thrasher, or Fred Giannelli, the latter apparently having shown up to witness the gig. With the now-pandrogynous Gen ruling over the stage with gender-defying confidence, s/he led the group through a rock-n-roll "Greatest Hits" revue that culminated with a breathtaking, riotous rendition of "Discipline". As a significant snowstorm surged outside, so did PTV3 indoors, leaving the audience's appetite well whetted for new original material from this new band of merry pranksters.
Unfortunately, the ultimate result over three years later, Hell Is Invisible...Heaven Is Her/e, simply wasn't worth the wait. Launching with a wacky sample riffing on Frankensteins and Communists, the funky opener "Higher & Higher" begins with such passion that what follows is even more of a letdown. With an experienced and adventurous frontperson like Gen, the last thing I anticipated was the kind of cheap, directionless over-the-hill psych-rock that litters this truly disheartening record. Songs like "Just Because," which unnecessarily resurrects and regurgitates Psychic TV's "I Like You," persist long after the riffs turn rancid, a poor attempt to recreate that trippy modus operandi that s/he has somehow misplaced. Gen's voice, sadly, has soured as well, now devoid of the simultaneously lilting and sneering affect that added another layer of intricacy and intrigue to his diverse catalog. Misguided though probably intentional, "Maximum Swing" might as well have been performed through a cancer-related throat hole and is easy to pass over.
As with the aforementioned "Just Because," the synthesized nursery rhyme flow of "I Don't Think So" rehashes Thee Majesty's "All Beauty Is Our Enemy" as well as the version from Gen's exquisite collaboration with Merzbow, leaving me to wonder if s/he has either run out of fresh ideas or chosen lazily to rest on his/her laurels. From a provocative artist who transgressively demands nothing short of a total gender, Hell Is Invisible...Heaven Is Her/e contradicts such ambitious self-reflection with regressive self-indulgence.
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