Taylor Hawkins
& The Coattail Riders
Get The Money COLUMBIA
Foos drummer delivers impressive solo LP.
S
ure, he gets his turn singing Under
Pressure at Foo Fighters shows, but
surfer-dude drummer Taylor
Hawkins is gradually being usurped as
Dave Grohl’s most prominent sidekick by
Rick Astley. His response has been to step
up the solo career he began with 2016’s
KOTA EP, following stints with Taylor
Hawkins And The Coattail Riders (see
what he did there?) and The Birds Of
Satan. This second solo release continues
his forage through the annals of pomp
rock and prog metal with the help of an
array of superstar sidekicks of his own:
Grohl, Roger Taylor, Joe Walsh, LeAnn
Rimes, Nancy Wilson, Duff McKagan,
Steve Jones, Chrissie Hynde... it’s like
a post-grunge Ringo’s All-Starrs.
Hawkins remains unrepentant about
the coattails he’s ridden in on; he slyly
slips a snippet of Foo Fighters’ Best Of You
into synth metal opening track Crossed The
Line, and a space-noise coda that tips
a wink to his work with Coheed And
Cambria. The squealing-guitar tips he
picked up working with Brian May pay off
on Don’t Look At Me That Way, which is
basically Queen if they’d got into more
fights in country and western bars.
There’s plenty more here to suggest that
Hawkins is happy being a classic rock
magpie, such as the ill-fitting rag-bag of
stadium rock mores that make up ShapesOf Things, or the way that Middle Child aims
at Lodger-era Bowie but hits Thin Lizzy,
right down to the sort of whiskied
harmonies and angle-grinder guitars
you’re surprised to find in a loving ode to
one’s daughter.
But there’s a willingness to mould and
mutate his chosen forms too. Yo u ’ r e N o
Good At Life No More sandwiches a gristly
biker blow-out with aquatic piano
interludes, where Hawkins sings through
MGMT’s bubble machine like a lonesome
Aquaman. C U In Hell is like listening to
ELO playing in a different dimension,
before the whole thing turns into an
AC/DC wrecking ball of noise. Kiss The
Ring is pure futurist gutter rock, despite
some lyrics that wouldn’t be out of place
on the crudest Def Leppard record: ‘Yo u ’ re
my queen and I’m your king/I wanna give you
everything/All you gotta do is kiss the ring’. Best
of all, I Really Blew It comes on like
a demented QOTSA, with Hawkins
confessing his life’s errors accompanied
by Perry Farrell and the most desperate
screams you’ll hear on record (courtesy of
Dave). And that’s before he really loses his
shit and turns to booze and masturbation
in the chorus.
Retro rock with rage and aspiration.
Follow that, Astley.
QQQQQQQQQQ
Mark BeaumontLionize
Panic Attack
ELECTRIC RECKONING MUSIC
Maryland rockers battle
through the turmoil.
Few things will
get a band to
raise or fold like
losing your
drummer,
getting dropped by your label,
watching friends die and seeing
a moron seize control of your
country within the space of
a couple of years. But the
catalogue of disasters that have
threatened to T-bone Maryland
funk-soul brothers Lionize has
instead lit a fire under their arse,
producing an album that blazes
with anger and defiance.
Exploding Future Blues and the
title track are wrapped in layers of
fuzzy organ and guitar, frugging
like hometown buddies Clutch at
a country wedding. And there’s
a wide streak of fury smouldering
under the lava-lamp blues of
Andy Kaufman’s Not Dead, which
takes aim at ‘fake news’
hypocrites. Smart and danceable:
a rare combination.
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Dave EverleyHawklords
Heaven’s Gate HAWKLORDS
Often barnstorming third
album in trilogy from
ex-Hawkwind players.
Having dealt
with the
weighty topics
of war and
peace on their
two previous albums, Hawklords
(a revival of the temporary
moniker by which Hawkwind
went some 40 years ago) now
turn their attention to love. Their
sense of thematic ambition is
preposterously admirable, and
this is matched by their playing;
unabashed, as if they are playing
in a celestial stadium to a vast,
interplanetary audience.
Featuring, among others, Dave
Pearce on drums, Jerry Richards
on guitar and vocals and Dead
Fred on synths and keyboards,
Heaven’s Gate motors into action
with Isle Of The Dead, which lays
down a Neu!-like beat, a sign of
space rock’s affinity to
Krautrock. False Gods features
arcing analogues spinning and
sparking like Catherine wheels,
while A State Of Life takes in its
sweep prog rock’s bluesy origins
and an ancient vision of the 20th
century involving silver
machines and jet-packs.
These players are seasoned,
experienced pilots, and the
energy levels are generally huge.And, with We Love You, they land
us safely in an Arcadian place.
Great fun.
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David StubbsAngel
Risen CLEOPATRA
Knights in white satin
Hard-rocking
and packed
with heavenly
hooks and
harmonies,
Risen marks the return of
consummate pompers Angel- featuring original guitarist
Punky Meadows and vocalist
Frank DiMino. Picking up where
their career stalled in the early
80s, this hefty 17-track
comeback sortie is designed to
appeal to fans of old across the
board. From the radio-friendly
likes of Stand Up and Don’t Want
You To Go, via the celebratory
nostalgia of 1975 , through to
crunchy rockers like the excellent
We Were The Wild, Under The
Gun, Our Revolution and My
Sanctuary, the diverse
songwriting chops are without
doubt impressive. Ultimately,
with so many top tunes they
could have ditched a couple of
the mediocre cuts (the
shameless cheese-fest IOU, for
example) for a tighter set. The
almost inevitable reworking of
their classic To w e r is a fine bit of
Angel delight to round things off.
Time to get your wings.
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Essi Berelian
Admiral Sir
Cloudesley
Shovell
Very Uncertain Times
RISE ABOVE
South Coast greasers emerge
from 1973 wormhole with
gnarly fourth album.
You know things
are getting bad
when even
these Hastings
hairies are
moved to comment on the state
of the nation: ‘Save your money,
say you’re sorry,’ frontman Johnny
Gorilla growls on the title track.
And while this Life On Mars-in-
reverse-style awakening
mercifully relates only to the
lyrics, there’s a contemporary
gloominess to this follow-up to
2016’s Keep It Greasy.‘Sitting
round ain’t too much fun/There
should be three, instead there’s one,’
Gorilla sighs amid the
sledgehammer riffing of Iceberg,
while sludge-rock gem Blackworth
Quarry is a grimy metaphor for
life at the rock’n’roll coal faceALBUMS
84 CLASSICROCKMAGAZINE.COM