Conscious Consumer

The sophomore and final studio album from punk icons - X-Ray Spex. The highly sought after album received a very limited CD only release in 1995 on Receiver Records in the UK and had been officially unavailable for 27 years.

The album reunited the iconic X-Ray Spex vocalist - Poly Styrene with original X-Ray Spex saxophonist - Lora Logic and bassist - Paul Dean, as well as guitar from Kula Shaker frontman Crispian Mills under his then pseudonym Red Spectre.

These days most people don’t even realise that X-Ray Spex had a follow up to what is now embraced as one of the classics of the punk rock period. This lovingly compiled revisit puts the spotlight on a lost gem that has many of the hallmarks of the debut but is sieved through a different lens. Conscious Consumer was an upgrade of the classic debut with a same punk rock urgency and themes of consumerism but with a poppier edge and a more considered wisdom gleamed from the ups and downs of life from the perspective of an older, wiser, Krishna devotee.

In 1995 the album was an unexpected comeback and a lost classic. It was the first new material recorded by the band for years despite many of the songs being written a decade before. 

The late Poly Styrene is now a pop culture pin-up for an originality and feminism that barely existed at the time. Her acerbic, witty and brilliant lyrics and distinctive voice have stood the test of time, and along with the band’s original sax player Lora Logic, she has become part of the punk rock narrative. 

Listening to the album again after a long break, Paul Dean is surprised. “Conscious Consumer now sounds so much better than I remember. It wasn’t properly released at the time and so no one knows about it. If you love Germfree Adolescents you will love Conscious Consumer they are linked together. X-Ray Spex didn’t have just one great album it was two!”

Limited Dinked Edition