ALAN VEGA 'Collision Drive' LP

Visionary provocateur, vocalist and poet Alan Vega’s first two solo albums found the New York legend not so much reinventing his signature sound as reinforcing it. By replacing Suicide co-founder Martin Rev’s icy synthesizers with rock instrumentation, Vega distills his mutant punk-rockabilly style - equal parts Charlie Feathers and Iggy Pop - to its very essence.

Collision Drive, released in 1981, broadens the scope of his debut, with Vega employing, for the first time, a full band. If this sounds, on paper, like a more conventional Alan Vega, fear not: the singer’s trademark snarls, hiccups, and general derangement are here in spades, even on an otherwise faithful cover of Gene Vincent’s “Be Bop A Lula.”

The album’s other cover tune is none other than his own “Ghost Rider,” originally recorded by Suicide, reimagined here as a dubbed-out rockabilly vamp.

Elsewhere, Suicide’s paranoid epic “Frankie Teardrop” is given something of an 80s update in the form of the bleak and haunted “Viet Vet.”