I rarely make blind buys but both these albums fall into that category. I knew Ellen Foley's Spirit of St Louis was considered like a spin-off Clash album, and I was also familiar with X-Ray Spex's Germ-Free Adolescents, so I suppose they weren't entirely blind. Both are pretty good albums but not superb enough to make me feel more adventurous about not trying before buying.
Ellen Foley was dating Clash guitarist Mick Jones, which apparently also meant not only would Mick produce the album but he'd get some of his bandmates to play on the album and even write a few songs for it, too. Any gaps left by the Clash were filled in by members of Ian Dury's band the Blockheads, so there's pretty good pedigree here. But Ellen's singing isn't too grand and these songs end up sounding like Sandinista! B-sides (if you can imagine what B-sides of a triple album would sound like). So even though Sandinista! is probably my favorite album, the association doesn't quite help boost Foley's album as much as she probably hoped.
As for Poly Styrene's album Translucence, I expected something like the awesomeness of X-Ray Spex but this is quite different. Instead of X-Ray's bombast, Translucence is muted and often unexpectedly pretty. There's the kind of instrumentation (mainly the use of horns) that I associate with Sandinista!-era punk copping Lovers' Rock, so that's all good. A few songs suffer from the 'repeat the title way too often' curse but otherwise this is an interesting enough album.
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