Sincerity is the keynote of Clothes, Clothes, Clothes …, just as it was of the musical movement Albertine had such a big hand in ... What strikes you is the tone and technique of her writing. It’s simple, so it works: she uses the present continuous throughout (with, occasionally, an italicised reflection or commentary from today in brackets), which places you squarely in each moment ... Her character runs through the book like letters through a stick of rock, and this is more a lesson in how to look back from middle age than it is a conventional rock memoir – no self-aggrandisement, but occasionally a quiet, defiant pride in her achievements.
Ms. Albertine’s book is wiry and cogent and fearless. It contains story after story about men who told her she couldn’t do things that she did anyway ... Her book has an honest, lo-fi grace. If it were better written, it would be worse ... She’s quite honest in this memoir about whom she slept with, and the attendant miseries. On her first page, she says, 'Here we go then, (genital) warts an’ all' ... Ms. Albertine’s life up to the breakup of the Slits occupies only half of Clothes Clothes Clothes. There’s a lot of pain in the second section, which she calls Side 2: loneliness, doubt, a bad marriage, cancer, depression.
...a profoundly unsparing and affectionate memoir: a tale of being present for punk’s foundation, falling out of music into middle-class oblivion, and finally coming back to performing in 2008 and to recording new music in 2010. I haven’t seen anything that captures the different sides of punk so well ... Clothes recalls Edna O’Brien’s similar, though more serpentine and literary, journey in Country Girl. Albertine is an escape artist, one who managed to circumvent a boredom worse than death in her youth, found herself trapped in a life she couldn’t adjust to, and eventually, with great determination and grit, started over from scratch in music.
...a tight, bracingly honest story ... Were this merely a memoir of punk culture and personal empowerment, Clothes, Clothes, Clothes... would be a nice snapshot. But halfway through, the Slits break up — and rather than the story petering out, the dissolution serves as the gateway to an inspired second half, dubbed 'Side Two,' that traces Albertine’s far less glamorous adulthood ... Albertine’s clarity of expression in these chapters makes them equally propellent ... Crammed with wicked observations and keen memories — especially what and whom she was wearing throughout her fashion-obsessed life — Albertine’s book is sharp and quick-witted. She knows her way around a sentence and exudes confidence.
Patti Smith and Kristin Hersh had better prose, but Albertine has raw energy, utter honesty. She also tells a formidable story. It begins with the comment that autobiographers are either twats or broke: 'I’m a bit of both.' She endears and charms ... This tale could be a misery memoir, but Albertine refuses to play victim. She has all the positive energy of the Slits, toughness and laughter.
The book dispensed with groupie cliches and gossipy reveals in favour of something more impactful and moving. In recounting the early days of punk in London, Albertine created a work of social geography and cultural class consciousness ... Her ferocity and insight were carried along by her ease with words.
Diving in with expectations of lurid tales of debauchery amongst the spitting, snarling purveyors of punk’s origins is only natural. And Albertine name drops just about everybody who was anybody during that time. But what may surprise you is how real her story ends up being. Once she takes herself out of the scene, her life becomes dramatically normal. And this is actually where you are pulled in the most ... Albertine is a woman of few words, not going off on tangents of massive detail. Much like her life during her early years, she just floats along on minimal verbiage, just being and not necessarily doing; although she does quite a bit ... Her fight with the deadly disease are some of the most vivid scenes written. She doesn’t minimize or sugarcoat her body’s physical and mental traumas.
In this funny, well-written and poignant memoir, she relates what it was like to be in the first wave of women who were able to join bands despite lacking formal training in music. But this book isn’t just about the punk era. It follows Viv’s life from childhood through to the present ... Pithy, hilarious and smart, this is a wonderfully observant account of the life of a woman who made her dreams come true.
...a brutally honest book about the blood, guts, sweat and tears that went into becoming a woman in the Seventies. You don’t need to be a fan of the Slits or even punk to be gripped from the off ... Most rock autobiographies are interesting mainly in the first half and get dull post-success, but Albertine’s just keeps getting better as the band breaks up and she throws herself into a career teaching aerobics (more sweaty, liberated women leaping around to music), then film.
...a thoughtful, delightfully written memoir of the days of punky yore ... Albertine’s book belongs alongside the work of Jon Savage and Caroline Coon as a primary document of an explosive time in British music and British culture generally. Just the thing for fans of punk—and of its heroines, too.
