Search and Destroy : Julian Cope

Destroy - dunno ?

Jehovahkill

World Shut Your Mouth

Saint Julian

both volumes of biography.

Destroy:

Autogeddon

Interpreter

He was once a total hero of mine, but I'm finding his act rather irritating of late, I must admit. Still, he's one of the good guys IMO, and his website's pretty good too.

x0x0

Destroy :"Autogeddon" and "20 Mothers"

In any event,

SEARCH: PEGGY SUICIDE - Not only my very favorite album of Julian's, but one of my favorite albums of all time. It came out of left field at the ass end of the 80's to usher in a new "phase" of J.Cope that was both musically more adventurous and conceptually focussed. Brilliant from start to finish. As a second, SAINT JULIAN's polished pop represents his leather-clad narcissistic phase at its zenith, not least for the singles, "World Shut Your Mouth" and "Trampolene."

DESTROY: I can't say "everything since PEGGY SUICIDE," as that would be an easy, knee-jerk reaction, but it's tempting. Despite isolated tracks ("Fear Loves this Place," "Upwards at 45 Degrees," the simply sublime "Try Try Try," "Highway to the Sun"), but overall the albums have really dipped in the quality department, AUTOGEDDON being the worst offender to these ears. His last "proper" album, INTERPRETTER didn't do him any favors either. His grasp on sanity seems a bit more tenuous again these days, although that makes for amusing reading at the very least. His monthly bulletins on his website (www.headheritage.com) are always good for a laugh. Bless'im.

Destroy -- _My Nation Underground_ was a *dreadful* mistake...

Destroy: 'Reward' -The Teardrop Explodes - Suddenly and inexplicably popular on BCC trailers, sports clips etc.

DESTROY- My Nation Underground. Yucko. Find Interpreter overproduced, but can live with it. I'm also afraid of Brain Donor, yet will purchase it anyway, as it might be so spectacularly bad that it will be great somehow.

Destroy: My Nation Underground

I say to Julian .... Ride On !!!

Long may he continue to entertain. Good value live too and when the records were good they were sublime.

Destroy: That bloody endless Mellotron two chord solo.

destroy: the non-believers.... jus' kiddin'

seriously, julian is something you have to wrap your mind around to understand the whole trip... a very accessable bloke as well. top shelf, my fave.

Destroy: My Nation Underground, Saint Julian, Autogeddon

Bill Drummond Said: "Julian Cope's vast talent has never been stretched ... Nobody who has worked with him has had the bollocks to tell him, 'Julian, it's a load of shite, go back and do it properly' ... To have that sort of talent and waste it is a crime against creation."

http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio2/shows/radcliffe/

Has anyone seen him play recently? Any good?

http://www.bbc.co.uk/6music/

Genius squanders. It's a well known fact.

Autogeddon is fab.

Destroy: There is little I would literally destroy but much that I never listen to: _Floored Genius 2_ and everything from _My Nation Underground_ onward.

http://www.thewire.co.uk/images/artists/cope_julian/COVER309.jpg

oh dear

Incredibly giant version: http://www.thewire.co.uk/images.php?imageID=2779

His hair is bad.

God loves Helvetica.

I am not a fan of Cope's music, but I can't help but admire the man. He always makes me smile. I love his purple prose writings.

I notice the Wire describes how he took two acid tabs to celebrate (or get over) his 50th birthday. He took a dose of salvia this past summer ("the doors it opened took a very long time to close again"). As a result of which he has temporarily stopped driving his car: "he says he saw a wasp on the windscreen and tried to squash it with his finger, and inadvertently poked a hole right through the glass".

I didn't think the effects of salvia were that extreme.

he's starting to look like Don Bolles

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3043/2815187723_7b229622f6.jpg

A lot of posters seem to respect the man but slight the music. Which is fine, but I love the music to death. Sure, he's terribly uneven, but I'm a sucker for unadorned guitar pop perfection, and most everything he's released contains a couple classics (kinda like Robyn Hitchcock or GBV/Pollard in that sense). Seek the Julian Cope EP (w/ "World Shut Your Mouth"), Fried and Peggy Suicide for starters. And work out from there. A few favorites:

Reynard the Fox
Bill Drummond Said
Sunspots
Elegant Chaos
Head Hang Low
World Shut Your Mouth
Warwick the Kingmaker
Spacehopper
Jellypop Perky Jean
Hanging Out and Hung Up On the Line
Safesurfer
Head
Upwards at 45 Degrees
The Tower
Don't Call Me Mark Chapman
s*t*a*r*c*a*r
Senile Git

And the Citizen Cain'd LP (I no) is pretty goddam great, as far as heavy-duty Stooges/High-Rise worship goes.

I really like the album "Interpreter". Maybe it's unfair to call it his Brit-pop album, but it does have some musical and production similarities with other albums of the time, like "Different Class" or "Denim on Ice". It's eclectic, well produced pop music that is very seductive because of the idiocyncratic author and some more interesting influences than most pop records at the time.

A lot of posters seem to respect the man but slight the music.

I realise that I wrote above that I'm "not a fan of his music". That was rather sloppy of me. I should have said that I've not yet gotten to know his music. I actually reckon he'd be right up my alley. So thanks for the recommendations. The Citizen Cain'd LP especially sounds perfect.

He played a couple of solo shows in Italy last week and I'm told they were beautiful affairs (friend band Father Murphy supported him in Rome).
Cope on acoustic guitar, casiotone and piano, a lot of old and new favourites, including Teardrop Explodes stuff like You Disappear From View.

Screaming Secrets:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ysbtAOtF-w8

Pristeen:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nj5tizDPubg&feature=related

Citizen Cain'd is great. It includes two brilliant lengthy songs in a kind of perfected heavy ecstatic Neil Young vein: "I Will Be Absorbed" and "Feels Like A Crying Shame".

Contenderizer OTM- his every record has duds, but his way with a killer hook is too seldom noted.

I must say I quite liked last year's Black Sheep. A very good acoustic-tinged album, with more than a few nods to Jehovakill and Fried.

so, no one loves Autogeddon, then? I'm about 5-6 albums deep & thinking of picking up that one (or 20 Mothers) next

Autogeddon's no Jehovahkill, but it's decent enough imo. This was a pretty bizarre Top Of The Pops appearance from that era:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nttnQxRpKrg

Autogeddon has more than a couple of good songs - I even like Starcar, that's nothing more than a blatant rip-off of Maggot Brain.

There's a lot of filler in 20 Mothers, but I listened to it a lot at the time and again there is more than a nice pop song.

I always loved Robert Mitchum. Not sure if it's on an album, but it was done for a Radio 1 session as tribute to Pete de Freitas.

I remember a funny interview Cope did about the time of Autogeddon, admitting that he'd very recently learnt to drive, and was really enjoying his new-found driving freedoms.

That version of "Robert Mitchum" is on the new expanded version of "Floored Genius 2".

A version of "RM" is on Skellington, I believe.

I remember a funny interview Cope did about the time of Autogeddon, admitting that he'd very recently learnt to drive, and was really enjoying his new-found driving freedoms.

Yeah, that's pretty much what 'Ain't No Gettin' Round Gettin' Round' is about iirc.

Well, he's back:

Happy New Year and welcome to PSYCHEDELIC REVOLUTION, the first of two albums of Julian Cope songs for 2012. Gone temporarily are those massed percussion Black Sheep workouts of recent years, replaced across PSYCHEDELIC REVOLUTION’s two half-hour-long CDs by eleven epic examples of the Archdrude’s most scrupulously-written balladry. Listen to those fucking lyrics! And as CD1 and CD2 are dedicated to Cope’s two most politically intense heroes and heroines – Che Guevara and Leila Khaled – listeners will be right to expect the always fiery intensity of the Archdrude’s performance. Expect tales of insurrection, tales of building new cultural traditions and tales of sexism, racism and even species-ism. Yes, both intellectually and sonically, this is a record to engage deeply with the listener’s unconscious. And with its massed banks of Mellotron 400, wah-acoustic guitars, oboe and brass, this new Cope album ! is one to Send You Under again and again.

PSYCHEDELIC REVOLUTION features chanteuse Lucy Brownhills taking lead vocals on the title track, and arrives with a 16-page booklet chock full of new political art and poems from the Archdrude. Dig PSYCHEDELIC REVOLUTION and look out for its sibling REVOLUTIONARY SUICIDE later this year. It’s 2012, fuck yeah!
Phase of CHE GUEVARA

Raving on the Moor
Vive Le Suicide
Cromwell in Ireland
Revolutionary Man
As the Beer Flows Over Me
Hooded & Benign

Phase of LEILA KHALED

Psychedelic Revolution
X-Mass in the Woman’s Shelter
Roswell
Because He Was Wooden
The Death of Rock‘n’roll

I got this today. The pic doesn't do it justice, with it's black lizard-skin looking cover, the layout, print, even paper used, it looks like an ancient holy text.

http://www.faber.co.uk/media/cache/c6/ea/c6eaa7c0dabf52f7f6ec3351d172977f.jpg

Review: http://www.popmatters.com/pm/review/171487-julian-cope-copendium/

where'd you get it?

thought this revival was going to be someone telling us that the new album was a return to form as the pr gumph goes on about peggy suicide.

"Welcome to 2013 and the truly Post-Thatcher Age, and Welcome to Julian Cope’s long delayed new album REVOLUTIONARY SUICIDE: eleven sumptuous and highly charged songs that teem with outrageous orchestrations and compellingly-crafted words of protest, activism and historical richness. Weep along with the dreadful beauty of the Archdrude’s most epic ever song ‘The Armenian Genocide’, sway with the bucolic agricultural rhythms and devotional lyrics of ‘Hymn to the Odin’, pump your fists in the air to the Detroit soul of the title-track, or just give yourself entirely to the divine-but-gaping 70-minute-long musical maw, nay, the Hot Mess that is REVOLUTIONARY SUICIDE. New poems? You got it! New concepts? You got it! We got the Mayans’ predictions out the way and we’re all still here. So maybe everything that went before 2013 was just a dry-run for what’s to come. Perhaps you’ll even be! lieve that once you’ve heard the enormous scope and vision of REVOLUTIONARY SUICIDE.

love the write up, but i cant deny that i fear the druids output these days.

anyone heard it yet ?

I live with the drummer from Spanish Doom rock band Orthodox who are reviewed in the book, so was lucky to get Copendium for cheap. It is indeed a fine looking object.

Agree with whoever said upthread search the books and destroy the music though.

I ordered it, but it isn't here yet. Once you get beyond Interpreter, you've really gotta love the guy to want to buy his records. There's lots of fun to be had, but... I don't know what to say. It's like being a fan of classic Doctor Who or something. Does anyone else, and I say this coming from a position of totally loving the guy, think his current aesthetic gives off a power Euro-racist vibe? Maybe it's only from the American POV. But all the Norse gods, white-red-and-black, psych metal, Germany and Japan stuff... sets off aesthetic alarm bells. Maybe he's reclaiming it or something.

Woden is pretty fun, if you liked Odin, if you like 70 minutes of rumbles, drones and space noises. I do!

Unreservedly loving the new album. First Cope album I've listened to compulsively in a dog's age.

Takes a couple listens, but the melodies are fantastic and there's a bit of variety in style/vibe(two things I wasn't finding much of in his work of the last 10+ years).
Definitely hearing something here that I haven't heard since Jehovahkill and bits of 20 Mothers.

If you rate Jehovahkill, there's def something here for ya.

So... should I go back and try the last few albums? Initial listens on most were VERY underwhelming.
What did I miss?

genuinely disliked it on a cursory first listen (sad, cuz i'd love to love some new jc), but i'll come back in a couple days and try again.

genuinely disliked it on a cursory first listen (sad, cuz i'd love to love some new jc),

well, that's me done.

hard work JC = not interested JC.

i don't mind listening to an album a few times for the click to happen (in fact those albums are often the best), but he has drifted too far away from my world in recent years for me to give him another chance ..

Raffles, I highly rec Citizen Cain'd. It's too long but the good stuff is v v good and it is song-form in a kind of crazy horse style.

I believe I have Citizen, Mr. Lewis, so... will try (try try). Thanks for the heads up!

Mark E - didn't really find this a difficult listen at all. after a handful of listens, I can hum 70% of the tunes on it from memory. Been awhile since that was the case w me and JC. I can certainly see it not being everybody's cuppa though! It IS on Spotify, so... try before you buy applies!

also, i think i saw a non-special edition of the 'Copendium' compilation today.
i.e a pretty basic 3 cd boxset edition - no book .. just the cds.
is it worthy of a lot of £££ ?
i have never heard of any of the bands ... is it unlistenable gumph, or worthy ?
well, i have heard of some of them, but never knowingly heard them ..
for reference - i like some of the f*cked up mad prog stuff on finders keepers - is that a valid reference point ?

cool idea re spotify ..

didn't think he would be part of that crowd ..

will listen as i think i need to reconnect with JC after many years of distance

( i mean, there was a time he was my #1 all time, and so when he fell off from the top spot, never mind the list completely, i took it personally !)

Never picked up Compendium.
Been years since I used to purchase anything with his name on it (hey ho Modern Antiquarium).

If anyone has info, I'm curious too.

re: Spotify: for some reason, the first three songs are listed in the single section... and the RS in the album section is songs 4-11.

Cope is on twitter now... has a mailing list... and he's putting new things on Spotify. Lookit him go!

you know what really pisses me off ..
if he did a 'f*ck it here's the classics' tour for festivals etc, it would totally totally rule (if skinner were allowed into the band of course!).
he has a brilliant back catalogue, and yet he seems so intent on burning all good will that us old f*ckers have towards him.
if ever there was a dictionary definition of the phrase 'ever decreasing circles' then all they would have to do is put in the explanation as 'julian cope' and all would understand.
such a shame ..

Weirdly, I was pondering buying the Modern Antiquarian yesterday ... now that you can buy it for 20 odd quid from Amazon (I must confess I have previously bought a copy and sold it without reading for £100+).

IIRC he played a st julian track and a teardrops song the one and only time i saw him but i could be wrong.

but yeah this is probably the "f*ck it here's the classics" tour i'd most like to see in the world

The only time I saw him was solo at the Middle East back in, I think, 1995. Round 20 Mothers, I think.

Was a pretty amazing show for one dude with a guitar/keyboard.
I remember him walking onto the stage, SUPER LATE, and doing a whole stetching, yawning act about just waking up... complaining about "city dwellers" and the strange hours we keep. He also played a song while walking back and forth on the bar. High entertainment!

As for "f*ck it here's the classics" - Rooster and DRS would be necessities!

It's not impossible this was the very time I saw him!

I think it was the only time he's played Boston since the Peggy show(s?) at the Paradise in 91 or so (which I was out of town for. grr), so... probably?

Hi!

Yeah, must be, I'm almost sure the show I saw was at the Middle East, and it was definitely a solo.

I was at that Middle East gig as well! Brilliant it was. Also not been into his work since, alas.

only 100 people attended that show but every one of them wasted the rest of their life on ilx

JC MidEastShow Support Group

If my memory isn't tricking me, I remember he also did a pretty fun interview on 'BCN when he was in town, which struck me as odd, as they were mainly playing Stone Temple Pilots and Candlebox round that time. He either played or had them play that tune that mentions Madonna and Courtney Love too, which the internet tells me is "Conspiracist Blues."

Quietus review sounds about right:

http://thequietus.com/articles/12603-julian-cope-revolutionary-suicide-review

http://i57.tinypic.com/2u3vdvr.jpg

Fucking hell, man.

like some sort of neolithic boogie-rock dustman

a silbury hillbilly

that's pretty much what the records sound like these days too.

has the band name WAZZOCK been taken yet?

i'm getting a hellboy vibe from the gloves

Why the WTF? have you not seen him a while or something?

He's looked like that (on and off) since about 1982.

He had to give up the Scott Walker to do it, though.

a silbury hillbilly

― john wahey (NickB), Tuesday, 16 September 2014 11:56 (5 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

V good.

i'm about as likely to read his novel as i am to wake up tomorrow speaking perfect inuit, but i think i would probably enjoy reading his thoughts on bono/blake or scottish independence right now

Autogeddon is amazing btw - I prefer it to Peggy Suicide if not Jehovahkill. So goddamn crazed and psychedelic - it's almost up there with Fried in terms of pure beautiful goofball madness, and it evokes a state of confused apocalyptic bliss - driving as the ultimate freedom as well as the means of damnation

Glad you revived this, for I've been listening to Jehovahkill all week and think it's one of the '90s best albums.

nice, you're right.

Peggy Suicide through Interpreter is probably one the best all-time five-albums runs in music.

I agree that Autogeddon is great. It seems v. underrated.

the emphatic pro-assassination stance of the album probably limited its appeal

Even though it was two years later, Autogeddon felt to me at the time to be in the long shadow cast by Jehovakill and the brilliant dates he played for that tour.

Autogeddon has some utterly shattering moments but it's not on the level of Fried, Jehovahkill and Citizen Cain'd for me.

Is there a story behind the lyrics change in "Greatness And Perfection", i.e. he really sings "greatest imperfection". It's a clever twist.

Put your head back in the clouds, Mr. Cope. His best.

you got room for one more, fear loves this place is in there twice! maybe it should be, it's one of his best.

Maybe Kolly Kibber's Birthday or Screaming Secrets, and they're past your cut-off but Autogeddon Blues or Dust from Interpreter.

good catch! Replaced.

you should certainly, certainly check out 20 Mothers fyi - it's full of lovely little pop songs (like Try, Try, Try, which I'm sure you'd love, and the amazing Highway To The Sun)

Yeah I like 20 Mothers more than autogeddon or interpreter tbh

Latterly, Citizen Cain'd is brilliant -- it has his hookiness AND his post-megalithic heaviness

"Try Try Try" is amazing because at that point he's clearly no longer interested in Top of the Pops but you just feel him saying "by the way, just so you know, I can still effortlessly produce incredibly hooky pop songs"

Given the other songs you liked, I'm surprised no "5 O'Clock World" -- why, because it's a cover?

5 O'Clock World is such an odd cover, by that point he'd been a pop star for like ten years.

was he ever really a pop star? Serious question. I know he and the TE had a few hits.

Teardrop Explodes at the time were Duran Duran level huge in the UK, no? He was pop pinup for sure. And World Shut Your Mouth was definitely in heavy rotation on MTV in the early 80s... also his My Nation Underground singles were constantly on Post-Modern MTV and 120 Minutes in '89 (how I first got interested in him), Island was definitely trying to make him one again.

Yeah, in my link I mentioned the CMJ and modern rock chart hits ("Charlotte Anne" hit #1).

Yeah, the sort of subdued psych aspect of Charlotte Anne is what made me buy My Nation Underground back then!

Not that I would have described it that way then, probably more like "this has that same weirdness the Legendary Pink Dots exhibit"

I bought St. Julian on the strength of a newspaper review and goddamn if it wasn't the most amazing thing I'd ever heard -- both just like the classic rock I was listening to and also totally not -- it rewired me

he is absolutely one of the greats (imago canon)

Teardrop Explodes at the time were Duran Duran level huge in the UK, no? He was pop pinup for sure.

neither he nor the teardrops were ever really household names.

When "Try try try" came out, I got a postcard from "KAK' promotions from Julian Cope basically bigging it up excitedly. I was more "Hey, its nice but aren't you more out-there than this?"

(I didn't write back, that's not what I mean)

Anyway, he did do TOTP. with Try*3 and he looked happy doing it. I think it was the last time he did the pop single hit thing, but hey.

Planetary Sit-In seems like another stab at it

Anyway, he did do TOTP. with Try*3 and he looked happy doing it

Little did I know!

Planetary Sit-In is more spacey-hippy-dude than upfront poppy; the Interpreter album overall is pretty accessible though!

Well I for one remember hearing it on the radio and thinking it was going to be a bigger hit than it was. Definitely sounds to me like he had a hit single mind:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yd5Fmb17jjY

in

I bought St. Julian on the strength of a newspaper review and goddamn if it wasn't the most amazing thing I'd ever heard -- both just like the classic rock I was listening to and also totally not -- it rewired me

― Guayaquil (eephus!),

otm – and I only heard it a decade ago

Check out the CD version, "Radio Sit-in". Very daft.

... and in a cabinet close to the exit an arrangement of football shirts with green-and-white hoops: Glasgow’s Celtic FC, of course. Like Edinburgh’s Hibernian, Celtic FC came into being during the late 1880s, in celebration of Scotland’s ancient Irish roots.

... if you ever needed definitive proof that Julian Cope had long ago lost his marbles.

Has anyone heard the Vesuvio album? Apparently this was a real album fleshed out from a fictional band mentioned in one of his books, a guitar drone record with Stephen O'Malley and Slomo's Holy McGrail.

https://www.headheritage.co.uk/merchandiser/item/TRCD06/

At least one track on SoubdCloud, CD still available. I skipped it, I'm not down with his sludge metal stuff.

Yeah I saw it was still available on his site, honestly more interested because of O'Malley than Cope himself, though I am a sucker for fictional albums fleshed out to become real things (cf Fucked Up).

I keep buying his new albums, but the returns... are diminishing. Wish he would actually try and record a proper album in a studio again with like a band and a producer.

There's rumors of a big Teardrop Explodes box set this year, though. Which could be fun.

Would it be fair to say he's not released a properly worthwhile album since Interpreter

I mean, John Balance Enters Valhalla was fun I guess

Citizen Cain’d is song-based and fantastic

yeah but that was eighteen years and seven albums ago

Yeah he honestly lost me around the turn of the millennium. I liked the Head Heritage music discussions for a good stretch there but eventually drifted away.

I really like Revolutionary Suicide

Like the last decade has been interesting but in a pinch I'd still rather hear even My Nation Underground

i saw JC live a few days after MNU had been released.
the hardcore fans at the front were singing along to one of the tracks, and JC said : 'how do you know the words !?'
of course the best part of the gig was when he went absolutely mad during the Reynard The Fox.
the venue, (Leeds Univerity Refectory), had this balcony, so during the instrumental section, he climbed up the speaker stack, got onto the balcony, and than ran all over the place.
gets to the central section of the balcony and leans over and starts shouting/singing re reynard.
it was one of the best gigs i had ever seen.

has MNU ever been reissued ?

Nah, Cope hates it and is unlikely to revisit in with a deluxe edition or whatever... I guess Island could do it without him.

thats what i thought.
not heard it in years as i bought it on cassette.

I too own My Nation Underground on cassette, and I love it! Had no idea JC was not into it but we all have our quirks.

Playing it now. Is that... a vibraslap on 5 O'Clock World???

It's an excellent album - title track and Charlotte Anne esp.

(A weird comparison to make as they're nothing alike musically but in terms of discography replacement/neglect it's sorta Julian's The Burning World)

Interpreter is exactly where I stopped with my Cope collection.

I don't want to go too hard on the post-Interpreter era because I really do love some of it (the drone trilogy Queen Elizabeth, Odin, and Woden for example) but really how do you top a run of albums like Peggy Suicide -> Jehovahkill -> Autogeddon -> 20 Mothers -> Interpreter?

With the two Teardrops Albums + World Shut Your Mouth + Fried + St. Julian but that's just me

“I will be absorbed by the river” and “feels like a cryin shame” are as good as anything he ever did

But as pointed out, citizen cain’d was a long time ago too

And in the days of LP those two songs could have made a whole album almost

Peggy Suicide -> Jehovahkill -> Autogeddon -> 20 Mothers -> Interpreter

I mean, this was exactly the run where I first dipped my toes in, but yeah... such a fantastic run.

Which is to say I understand CC has its share of filler but the core is v v nugatory

Peggy Suicide -> Jehovahkill -> Autogeddon -> 20 Mothers -> Interpreter?

There should be a name for this era. When he became full archdruid making fantastic multihued earth-conscious concept records but still had hit albums and hit singles. It's the period I've always been the biggest fan of.

yeah, it's like the era of overlap between his pop star and drude phases

It's like the opposite of Abacab-era Genesis

(aka the best era of Genesis)

I too own My Nation Underground on cassette, and I love it! Had no idea JC was not into it but we all have our quirks.

lol I saw this thread in SNA and I thought, I'm going to post about how I regularly put on my cassette copy of My Nation Underground while putting away laundry ... and yeah! It's really fucking good!

xp that is indeed the best era of Genesis

I gotta say there is one blemish in that imperial drude phase and its name is autogeddon

Hey wait is “Charlotte Anne” a pun on “charlatan”?

Sure is. (Or at least I have always assumed it was.)

I gotta say there is one blemish in that imperial drude phase and its name is autogeddon

― realistic pillow (Jon not Jon), Monday, 30 January 2023 20:12 (six days ago) bookmarkflaglink

but it rules

I like the song where he brains a fucker but it’s mostly dud for me

Autogeddon is kind of crucial in two different sequences of Copework - it's a self-consciously "minor" album after Peggy and Jehovah, keeping a similar crew of regular players and ambitious songwriting, but with less production and more focused themes to the writing - which paves the way for the similar restricted instrumentation and non-fussy production of 20 Mothers - which broadly takes a more positive approach to themes than the 'hovakill->'geddon sequence, and continues up to the outright "fuck it, pop star!" vibe of Interpreter. (The sonic approach of Autogeddon also suits the lyrical concept, ofc.)

But it's also the culmination of an extremely minimal detour with Rite and Skellington 2 - it works as a final chapter in that trilogy, as a bridge back to fully-arranged songs, or as a grounding/reset after the two major-label double-albums.

This looks interesting -

https://superdeluxeedition.com/news/the-teardrop-explodes-culture-bunker-1978-82/