The Only Ones sounded like late night cinema flickering across a rain drenched street. Peter Perrett wrote with a novelist’s eye for corners and consequences, while John Perry’s guitar carved silver lines through rooms where amps hummed like street lamps. The rhythm section walked with worldly patience, letting danger and tenderness share a cigarette in the doorway. These songs balance punk energy with classic pop craft, and they glow with a romance that knows the price of the ticket. Press play and step into a city of sly grins, blue lights, and melodies that feel like secrets you will never forget.
1 Another Girl, Another Planet
Every time this needle drops you can feel gravity tilt. The guitar intro is a small supernova that keeps blooming as the rhythm section locks into a sly forward push. Peter Perrett sings with weary wonder, a voice that knows both the rush and the cost, and he threads the lyric with images that make obsession sound like travel rather than mere escape. John Perry’s lead lines do not show off. They orbit the melody and throw sparks in short arcs, then return to serve the song. The band keeps everything taut. No wasted bars. No empty gestures. When the chorus lands the cadence sounds inevitable and brand new at once. The trick is contrast. Cool verses, uplifted refrain, a solo that feels like a window flung open onto night air. Underneath, bass and drums move with dancer control, giving the guitars a springboard rather than a cushion. The entire track is romance etched in neon. It admits danger without flinching and it finds beauty in that admission. Plenty of bands can play fast or loud. Very few can whisper while the room is roaring. That is why this performance still feels like city light on wet pavement, bright and a little unreal.
2 Lovers Of Today
The first Only Ones single carries the soft click of destiny. It opens like a letter, guitar chiming with quiet tension while Peter Perrett shapes the scene in a few careful lines. The tempo sits between drift and stride, which lets the emotion breathe. Listen to the way the harmony vocals glow just behind the lead, never candy sweet, always human. The arrangement builds in petals. A guitar phrase curls around the verse. Drums step forward with a measured heartbeat. A small flourish of keys widens the frame. Perrett writes about love as a present tense wager and he sings it without sermon. The band answers with discipline. They leave air between the phrases so each image can hang for a second. When the chorus finally lifts, it is not a shout. It is an unfolding. John Perry’s tone is glass and amber at once. He places notes like streetlights, a line at the curb and a brighter line at the corner. You hear the promise of the albums to come, and you also hear a group that already understands its own balance of nerve and restraint. It is intimate without being fragile. It is tender without flinching. It is a beginning that still feels complete.
3 The Whole Of The Law
Here is the ache that refuses melodrama. The Whole Of The Law moves with chamber like poise, a ballad that carries street dust in its pockets. Peter Perrett sings close to the mic as if speaking to one person, and that proximity turns each line into a confidence. The guitar arrangement is elegant without clutter. John Perry picks figures that ripple like light across a wall, then opens the sound with held notes that rise just when the lyric needs breath. The rhythm section does essential invisible work. Bass keeps a long horizon and the drums place soft markers that guide the ear through the rooms of the melody. This is a song about promises and boundaries and the way ordinary moments can feel like judgement. You hear restraint everywhere, which is why the climactic turns feel earned. A short swell of harmony arrives like the flicker of a memory and then recedes. A brief solo speaks in sentences rather than fireworks and returns the focus to the voice. The power lies in proportion. Nothing is pushed. Everything is drawn. By the final line you feel the quiet weight of choices and the warmth of a band that knows exactly when to step forward and when to step back.
4 No Peace For The Wicked
The guitars step out with a lazy swagger and a hidden blade. No Peace For The Wicked is a mid tempo walk through a city where every corner has a story and every story has a bill attached. Peter Perrett delivers the lines with dry wit and a curl of empathy, never moralizing, never shrugging. John Perry’s playing is a master class in conversation. Short answering phrases under the vocal, small climbs at the ends of lines, and a solo that threads melody with just enough grit to raise the stakes. The rhythm section locks a pocket that feels like evening on warm pavement. Bass moves in shaded curves while the drums leave space around the snare so the lyric can breathe. The magic is how the band turns resignation into movement. The chorus settles rather than explodes, which makes the title sound less like judgment and more like weather. Production choices are tasteful. A touch of room on the guitars. A little sheen on the vocal. Nothing that gets between the listener and the story. This is the Only Ones creed in miniature. Romance and consequence share the same cigarette. Beauty and trouble exchange glances and keep walking.
5 Out There In The Night
The streets feel longer after dark and this song knows it. Out There In The Night marries a brisk pulse to a lyric that smells like rain and taxi seats. The guitars sketch a restless lattice. One part ticks like nerves, the other throws brief arcs of light that seem to track passing headlights. Peter Perrett leans into the tale with a tone that understands loss without collapsing under it. The melody steps across the beat with quick grace which gives the chorus extra lift when it lands. John Perry’s solo is a small movie. A first phrase that suggests searchlights. A second that sounds like memory turning a corner. Then a decisive climb that sets the stage for the final verse. Drums and bass are the unsung heroes here. They carry the song forward with shoulders set, never crowding the vocal, never coasting. The arrangement is full of doors that open for one bar then close again which creates the sense of streets passing by outside a cab window. This cut captures a particular Only Ones trick. They turn nocturnal anxiety into something melodic and strangely consoling. The night is full of ghosts. The band keeps you company until morning.
6 Miles From Nowhere
Even Serpents Shine brought a wider frame and Miles From Nowhere uses every inch of it. The guitar tone is brightly cut but never brittle, and the opening figure walks with a purpose that feels both urban and dreamlike. Peter Perrett builds the lyric like a map of quick decisions and second thoughts. He never begs for sympathy. He simply shows the distances between people and the small ways we try to cross them. John Perry treats melody like architecture. He stacks parts that interlock, then slips a narrow line between them that catches the light just so. The chorus opens the sky without turning bombastic. Rhythm section craft keeps the song moving with human swing, bass sketching counterlines that feel like old friends walking alongside, drums adding tiny details that make the grid breathe. The bridge is a favorite Only Ones moment. It slows the gaze, lets reflection in, then hands the momentum back with a new shade of resolve. This is not road music about escape. It is travel as self inventory. It sounds like long bus windows and late afternoon sun on a tired face, then it turns the corner and you realize the day might yet be kind.
7 From Here To Eternity
The album Even Serpents Shine opens with a statement of intent, and this track still feels like a curtain lifting on a sharper stage. The rhythm guitar sets a confident stride. The lead guitar floats above it with filigree that hints at classic pop and baroque flourish without ever getting precious. Peter Perrett sings with a romantic fatalism that is closer to a novel than a diary. He sets up high stakes in ordinary rooms and lets the melody carry the weight. The production is lean yet luminous. You can hear fingers on strings and air around cymbals, and that clarity turns each part into a character. The chorus is not a shout but it fills the room. Harmony vocals arrive like light through stained glass, brief and vivid. John Perry’s solo is a lesson in restraint, taking the central idea on a short walk and returning it brighter. The lyric loves grand phrases yet refuses empty drama. The band mirrors that stance with playing that feels both stylish and grounded. It is a song about promises whispered in a kitchen that somehow sound like vows made in a cathedral. That balance is the Only Ones at their best.
8 The Beast
The Beast stalks rather than sprints. This performance taps a darker current in the band without losing their gift for melody. The guitars are thicker here, a mesh that keeps shifting from velvet to wire, while the rhythm section gives everything a slow swing that feels like trouble seen from across the room. Peter Perrett writes about temptation with novelist calm. No sermon, only detail. His vocal is measured and magnetic, as if the speaker were trying to convince himself as much as anyone else. John Perry answers with lines that flare and curl, less like traditional solos and more like thoughts escaping into the night air. The structure matters. Refrains do not break the mood. They deepen it, each return tightening the net. Small production touches add to the spell. A touch of echo that suggests large space. A second guitar buried deep enough to feel like a shadow. The result is a song that sounds like the inside of a bargain you should not have made, yet the beauty of the playing keeps you listening. That tension is the point. The Only Ones show how desire can be both poison and poem and how music can hold both truths at once.
9 Why Don’t You Kill Yourself
The title bites hard, but the song wears irony like a sharp suit. On Baby’s Got A Gun the band leaned into sleek surfaces, and this track uses that polish to set up a satire of romantic power games. The tempo is brisk and the guitars are clipped to perfection, leaving room for Peter Perrett to deliver barb after barb with an elegant shrug. He is mocking the melodrama that turns hurt into theater and he sells the joke by never winking. John Perry’s decorations are miniature masterstrokes. A sliding accent to underline a phrase. A chiming figure that cuts through the mix just enough to stay in your head all afternoon. The rhythm section builds a bright floor and never lets it sag. Bass writes little hooks of its own while the drums tick with metronome confidence and small human pushes at the right corners. The chorus lands like a punchline you wish you had thought of first. Production keeps edges shiny, which only makes the wit sharper. The song is not cruelty. It is clarity about the way some lovers weaponize sorrow. Few bands could walk that line and still deliver a tune you can whistle. They do it with ease.
10 Oh Lucinda Love Becomes A Habit
A pep talk wrapped in a pop jewel. Oh Lucinda sits at the point where compassion meets tough love, and the band frames that stance with one of their most graceful arrangements. The guitars dance in overlapping patterns that feel like sunlight through leaves, bright but never brittle. Peter Perrett addresses a friend with honesty that stings and heals. He lists the patterns that break a life and then offers a hand out of the loop. His vocal keeps warmth at the center even when the lines cut. The chorus is a gentle lift rather than a blast, which makes the title phrase feel like a banner raised by friends rather than a slogan thrown from a distance. John Perry plays in quicksilver phrases, sprinkling bright glints that keep the ear leaning forward. The rhythm section walks with an easy lope that refuses gloom. You can move to this while feeling the lyric land. Production adds a touch of shine that suits the era without sacrificing character. In a catalog full of nocturnal beauty, this is daytime resolve. It is proof that the Only Ones could offer solace without denying pain, and do it with melody that refuses to fade.
David Morrison is a frequent contributor to Singers Room. Since 2005, Singersroom has been the voice of R&B around the world. Connect with us via social media below.
