D
uff McKagan was the punk rock
kid who ended up in the world’s
biggest hair-metal band, but it
turns out he had an outlaw heart all along.
Te n d e r n e s s, his first solo album since Guns
N’ Roses reunited, and his second after
1993’s Believe In Me, forsakes the glitz and
glamour of Hollywood and rock’n’roll in
favour of Nashville and rootsy Americana.
Okay it isn’t quite a cryin’-at-the-sports-
bar country and western album, but its
dialled-back ambience, strategically
deployed pedal steel guitars and gospel-
tinged backing vocals put it in the
ballpark. There was always more to the
bassist than the Sunset Strip bozo
caricature (it’s difficult to imagine Slash
launching a wealth-management
company, as Duff did when he kicked the
hard stuff), so maybe this kind of
departure shouldn’t be surprising. What
is surprising is just how good it is.
Duff has been talking up Mark Lanegan
and the Afghan Whigs’ Greg Dulli as
touchstones, and the nocturnal ambience
the so-called Gutter Twins conjure on their
own work bleeds out across Te n d e r n e s s. But
the biggest factor here is McKagan’s chief
collaborator Shooter Jennings, son of
outlaw country frontiersman Waylon
Jennings. Shooter and his regular backing
band sprinkle some authentic Nashville
stardust across the album. You want
haunting lap steel guitar and a phalanx of
fiddles? Shooter’s got ’em.Any worries about cultural tourism are
dissipated in a few seconds of the opening
title track. A slow-burning semi-ballad
that makes a heartfelt plea for a little bit of
humanity in an inhuman world, it’s got
a reserved stateliness you’d never expect
from a man who shares a stage with Axl
Rose. Similarly, the gospel-infused Feel- written in honour of Chris Cornell, an
old friend of McKagan’s from Seattle –
snaps with the kind of honest-to-God
emotion his regular band would struggle
to match. It helps that McKagan isn’t the
greatest singer in the world; there’s no
artifice here. You can take the kid out of
punk rock...
If there is a problem here, it’s a surfeit
of conscience. McKagan has called this
a socio-political album, and by God he’s
determined to mourn the world’s ills,
from the opioid crisis to the unending
wave of police brutality. Noble
sentiments, for sure, but undercut by
occasionally ham-fisted lyrics. The worst
offender is Parkland, which is simply
a litany of school shootings that draws
the conclusion: ‘Oh shit, this is really bad.’
That’s paraphrasing, naturally. But not
by much. Yet the album transcends all
that, partly because it wears its heart so
openly on its sleeve, partly because these
songs gleam like jewels in the desert sun.
Hollywood’s loss is Nashville’s gain.
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Dave Everley
Sebadoh
Act Surprised FIRE
First album in six years from
80s/90s US indie rockers.
“Of all the records we have
made in our long career, this is
definitely the most recent,” says
Sebadoh’s Jason Loewenstein.
And while you wish more bands
would say that, he is too modest.
Act Surprised is a very decent
return indeed for the trio that also
includes Lou Barlow and Bob
D’Amico, a record bristling with
merit and a validating, electric
sense of urgency that it be made.
That’s evident immediately on
Phantom, which rages out of the
traps like half a dozen Hüsker
Düs, a pace we didn’t always
associate with Sebadoh.
Although this album is generally
cut from the lumberjack cloth of
grunge, there’s many a tie-and-
dye twist and sprinkle to these
songs – the arpeggiated guitar
that recurs on Celebrate The Void
and Sunshine, for example.
Stunned is an electric jolt of pure,
adrenaline inspiration, and the
rocky expanse of Reykjavik
a fitting conclusion.
Come back soon, guys.
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David StubbsSammy Hagar
& The Circle
Space Between BMG
You can’t beat pure class.
While Van Halen continually
drag their heels, Sammy Hagar
and Michael Anthony have put
all thoughts of a reunion firmly
behind them with this highly
entertaining album. Joined by
Jason Bonham and Vic Johnson,
they’ve conjured up a timeless
mix of classic American hard
rock, combining experience with
youthful panache.
The band aren’t afraid to
celebrate their roots – Can’t
Hang deliberately recalls
Zeppelin’s When The Levee
Breaks, while Trust Fund Baby
reimagines the riff from
Montrose’s I Got The Fire – but
they go beyond such detail,
through songs embracing
a range of emotions. Affirmation
has a driving mosaic, while
Bottom Line is a brassy strut that
Aerosmith would be proud of,
and Devil Came To Philly signals
a bluesy alchemy. The four band
members lock together
brilliantly, their talent shining
through whatever the occasion.
Hagar has called this
a conceptual album about
money and greed. But what
matters most is the strength of
the collective purpose and the
abiding quality of these songs,Duff McKagan
Tenderness UMC
on an album that is injected with
the highest musical values.
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Malcolm DomeEntombed
Clandestine – Live
SOUND POLLUTION MEDIA
Swedish death gods reaffirm
their supremacy.
The first fruits of
a semi-classic
Entombed line-
up that
reconvened in
2016, Clandestine – Live serves
primarily as a reminder that
these Swedes were one of the
death metal scene’s most
distinctive and influential forces.
With founder members Alex
Hellid, Uffe Cederlund and Nicke
Andersson all on board, this live
pummel through the band’s
classic second album from 1991
arguably exists partly as an
imperious rebuttal to the
ongoing existence of ex-vocalist
LG Petrov’s Entombed AD.
Ultimately, there’s no mistaking
the sound of the real thing.
Just as they were back in the
deathly day, Hellid’s crew are
razor-sharp, tighter than
a wasp’s turd pipe and armed
with the sharpest hooks the 90s
metal underground had to offer.
New vocalist Robert Andersson
plays his part with astute
understatement, allowing
Andersson’s turbo-charged
beats to drive the whole
celebratory but bruising affair
forward. If they can convert
these intensity levels into new
material, Entombed will reclaim
their throne with ease.
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Dom LawsonSavoy Brown
City Night QUARTO VALLEY
Veteran Brit blues-rockers’
album number 40.
Savoy Brown
founder Kim
Simmonds on
guitar/vocals
pared the band
to a trio in 2012, and the current
line-up is the longest-running in
the band’s history. Familiarity
breeds focus, it seems, and City
Night, the 40th Savoy Brown
album, delivers 12 songs where
the sound is consistent and only
the tempo varies.
Perhaps 56 minutes is a tad
over-generous, but the quality
rarely dips. Opener Walking On
Hot Stones, a screaming slide-
infused bass-heavy stomp, sets
the template and tells you all you
need to know. And if you can’t
guess what a song called RedGN’R bassist dials down the rock and ups the
country quotient on second solo release.ALBUMS
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