…If I Die, I Die cover

…If I Die, I Die

Released

Having steadily carved out a particularly vivid, wired space for themselves in the unsettled jumble that was both UK and Irish post-punk fields - they were friends with U2 but very defiantly in their own space - on …If I Die, I Die, Virgin Prunes reached a dramatic apotheosis. “Baby Turns Blue” is the song that sums it up the best, but the combination of Gavin Friday’s vocal desperation and beyond-glam extremity and the band’s transforming of rock-as-such into a  kind of alien ritual at once made it a goth landmark while at the same time transcending the form.

Ned Raggett

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