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Had Declan MacManus not made it in rock 'n' roll, he would have made a brilliant high-wire act. Sensing that the rockabilly inflections of debut album My Aim Is True were hopelessly recherché in 1978, he dispensed with his musical safety net entirely for follow-up This Year's Model.
Instead, dressed in skintight Sta-Prest, he delivered a scathing attack on everything from his own status as Next Big Thing ("Living In Paradise") to celebrity culture ("Lipstick Vogue") to boy-girl romance itself ("You Belong To Me"), all backed with The Attractions' wired intensity.
Later, of course, he would go country, grow a beard and crown himself King Of America — a journey charted in this current reissue campaign, and an Elvis-authored compilation, Rock And Roll Music. But it's with This Year's Model that his insatiable urge to "bite the hand that feeds me" really began.
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