Pitchfork

Take a look at the cover of Spurts, with Richard Hell leaning forward and mugging like some collaborative product between Malcolm MacLaren and Franz Oz (though his distinctive style predated both), looking defiant and probably a little strung out on something. Flip it over: There's Hell almost 30 years later, hair grown out and dyed, face filled out, looking over his shoulder through tinted glasses at three decades of music, mistakes, band breakups, and at least one certifiably classic document of the CBGB's punk scene, Blank Generation.

Spurts is not the first time Hell has compiled his own material. He collected the odds-and-sods R.I.P. when he ditched music to pursue writing in 1984; it was later expanded and repackaged as Time-- inexplicably omitting "Blank Generation" on both occasions. This time, the package features interview-style liner notes between Hell and critics Robert Christgau and Carola Dibbell giving background info on every track, and includes Hell's material with Dim Stars, recorded in the early 1990s with Thurston Moore, Steve Shelley, and Don Fleming. Hell himself claims this compilation should be "his only album," a definitive release that would "cut straight through" like any album would.

The Neon Boys were a precursor to the band Television; Hell was kicked out before they recorded their first album under the new name, but he was magnanimous enough to include two Neon Boys tracks at the start of the disc (not to mention close it with a live version of "Blank Generation" as played by Television). The preliminary version of "Love Comes in Spurts" had music written by Television's Tom Verlaine, and has next to no resemblance to the version on Blank Generation. But Hell's remix shows no signs of a bruised ego, pushing the guitars way up and his vocals down, serving the song well. The Stones-like fury of the rhythm guitar is well captured, and Verlaine's brief-but-inspired ascending lines can be felt in the back of your teeth.

From Hell's time with Johnny Thunders' Heartbreakers, he only includes the cream of the crop, "Chinese Rocks". Instead, the lion's share of Spurts leans on the Voidoids' Blank Generation and Destiny Street records. The Blank Generation work has aged best, coupling punk fury with eccentric delivery and rhythm that's not afraid to swing. It also features some inspired anti-guitar hero moments from the inestimable Robert Quine on "Liars Beware" and "Love Comes in Spurts". Destiny Street would show a slightly poppier and more contemplative side to the band, though "Kid With a Replaceable Head" is infectiously sinister and "Time" and "Ignore That Door" show Hell's songwriting growing more frank and direct.

Hell returned to recording in 1992 with a Dim Stars EP preceding one proper album. The songs chosen here mostly sound like jam sessions, like the two-chord "Dim Stars Theme", over which Geffen-era Thurston Moore scrawls recklessly while staying within the lines, bending the compositions but not breaking them, keeping a foothold for Hell's lyrics. "Monkey" is Hell at his most forthright, and the distorted guitars in the background seem incongruous with the popping clean chords and his newfound tenderness ("I swear I held my own hand pretending it was yours").

Spurts includes one more late-era compilation track from the Voidoids, "Oh", and two previously unreleased tracks, the Dennis Cooper-inspired "She'll Be Coming", which combines drum loops, Eastern tones, and a forced hillbilly accent, and the aforementioned Television of performance of "Blank Generation". The first side of Spurts is a righteous blast of indignant punk, and the second half indulges in some experimentation, some mood pieces, and some glances at hard-earned maturity. The best of his many compilations, and certainly the best place to start for the unfamiliar, Spurts flows as well as any original album. People still listen to those, right?