So much of the shorthand for New York punk seems to be in the grooves of this record. While 1980 was a bit late for any new band to enter the scene, poet Jim Carroll had been knocking around for years before that. In 1980, when The Jim Carroll Band finally released Catholic Boy, punk had already been defined by releases from Richard Hell, Television, Ramones, Blondie, and others. Still, this album, reissued in a new spectacularly-sounding edition by Fat Possum on December 6, remains a fantastic listen. If Jim Carroll couldn't exactly re-invent what had been put down already by Tom Verlaine, Hell, and Lou Reed, he at least brought a lot of poetic energy to the movement.
Of course, Catholic Boy is the album with the anthem-like "People Who Died", the sort of "Free Bird" of the underground for a spell, and the cut is still like a shot of adrenaline into the arm. Propulsive, reckless, adolescent (in the best possible way), the single is a tumultuous bit of business even 40 years on. Similarly, "I Want The Angel" is the closest Jim would ever get to the magical poetry of Patti Smith, whose "Ask the Angels" this echoes, while "Nothing is True" is more Dead Boys than Television. Carroll successfully navigated these sub-genres of the era here on Catholic Boy, going from the pumping "Wicked Gravity" and on to "It's Too Late", a snarling slab of Stones-in-the-Seventies-style stuff.
The Jim Carroll Band never really achieved the symmetry of The Patti Smith Group, or the near-mystical unity of Television, but they did, with Carroll fronting them, achieve some real glory, and never more than on the nearly-flawless Catholic Boy. I'm sure that some of the machismo of this one will sound silly to ears now in 2019, but in 1980, this seemed genuinely dangerous. At least in spots. Jim Carroll, wisely, made a rock-and-roll record, and one would be hard pressed to know that a genuine poet was the guy fronting the band on this rollicking record. Catholic Boy has never sounded better than on this edition, and one can remember with a fresh listen to this one how a writer and bunch of New York musicians were able to corral a whole style into one succinct punk masterpiece.
Catholic Boy is out on Friday via Fat Possum.