Classic Rock UK - April 2019

Walter Trout: every

track flooded with

hard-won soul.

act. They now number 12, and

Signs showcases an ensemble at

their confident peak, whether on

the gospel-charged funkery of

Walk Through This Life or the

torch ballad All The World.

Tedeschi has an earthy but

seductive rasp. She’s not nearly

as knowing as Bonnie Raitt, but

she’s every bit as impassioned

as Beth Hart and more

vulnerable than both and when

she turns political on the

environmental anthem Shame

(‘Don’t you wonder what’s in the

air?’) she’s plausible.

Trucks, meanwhile, is the blues

guitarist of his generation, and

together they’re a formidable

team. They lose their way when

they amble in pub-rock fashion

on the gormless Hard Case, but

for the most part they’re as

focused as they’re inspired.

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John Aizlewood

The Young Gods

Data Mirage Tangram

TWO GENTLEMEN

Squeaky bum time.

Back in the day,

Melody Maker

called this sort

of music

“arsequake”.

Something to do with the effect

the low bass frequencies and

clang of industrial metal had on

the nether-regions of the body.

Before Nine Inch Nails, artists as

disparate as Bowie, U2 and

Sepultura cited Young Gods as

an influence. Their 1987 self-

titled debut is the equal of

anything from My Bloody

Valentine – Bark Psychosis, even.

‘Electro-noise terrorists’ is

another way of terming the

haunting groove from this Swiss

three-piece fronted by Franz

Treichler. The trio specialise in

creating cavernous, voluminous

soundscapes filled with menace,

white noise, whispered vocals

and sometimes locked,

sometimes sprawling dance

furrows. Data Mirage Tangram is

the latest in a line of jaw-

dropping, arse-quaking

masterworks. Moon Above wails

and shudders. Entre En Matière

throws up silhouetted figures of

menace. All My Skin Standing is

11 minutes of pure intoxication.

Thirty years of avant-garde

desire and sampled grooves, and

no sign of a burn-out yet.

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Everett True

Reef

In Motion (Live From

Hammersmith) EARMUSIC

West Country hairies let rip on

full-blooded show at

Hammersmith Apollo.

Glastonbury-

based blues-

rockers Reef

successfully

surfed the

Britpop wave, notching up

a string of hits in the late 90s

before a self-inflicted wipeout

in 2003.

They reunited last year for the

excellent, George Drakoulias-

produced comeback album

Revelation, and this live

document is a timely reminder

of what they’re capable of. At

times you’re reminded why

vocalist Gary Stringer’s vein-

busting delivery has long been

considered aural Marmite. His

bull-elephant roar on crowd-

pleasers Place Your Hands and

Yer Old is still enough to terrify

wildebeest on the African

savanna. However, his dialled-

down delivery on My Sweet Love

• a duet with Lynne Jackaman


• and on Revelation standout First
  Mistake suggests he’s maturing
  into a commanding frontman.
  Reef might still lack the
  swaggering sense of desolation
  which made Free into rock
  immortals, but their wizened
  looks, as well as now including
  Jesse Wood, son of Ronnie, on
  guitar, add to the sense of oak-
  cask authenticity.
  It’s good to have them back.
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  Paul Moody

Desperate

Journalist

In Search Of

The Miraculous FIERCE PANDA

Adventurous, tag-dodging

space rock.

Sacrificial

Glitter. Space

Cult. Interpol

Improvement...

There are

a million names more evocative

of Desperate Journalist’s febrile

mix of shoegaze pop, goth rock

and bubblegum indie noir than

the one they chose, but the

London post-punkers keep the

pigeonholing hack on their toes

throughout this third album.

Pin them as a ponderous goth

Throwing Muses from opener

Murmuration, and they wriggle

straight out of the box with

a burst of gritted-diamond shoe

pop like Cedars, the sound of

being trapped in a firework

factory on fire. Clock the

stampeding Mission riffs and

galactic atmospherics of

Jonatan or Ocean Wave and

you might tag them as the

band Interpol could’ve been if

they’d had the advantage of Jo

Bevan’s space-angel vocals

rather than Paul Banks’s

throttled goat. Then they throw

a curve ball in the shape of

a hunted Hounds Of Love (Black

Net), or a subaqueous ballad

recorded in the vaults of

Aquaman’s own sonic

cathedral (Argonauts). Come

the final tracks, they settle on

being a shoegaze Smiths, with

Satellite the euphoric highlight

thanks to riffs played on strings

made of pure cumulonimbus

clouds. But you wonder how

a band this miracle-seeking

get lost in the modern musical

mist. Not enough desolate

journalists, perhaps?

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Mark Beaumont

Fat Cops

Fat Cops ABSOLUTE

Arresting debut from Britain’s

latest glam-rockers.

Glam-rock never

dies, perhaps

because it was

always a bit

undead in the

first place, and its tendency to

resurface is admirable, in bands

as diverse as Muse, Suede and

Earl Brutus.

Its newest incarnation – all

terrace stomp and catchy

choruses – is in the form of Fat

Cops, who have the relentless

surreal thunder of a good-day

The Fall and the melodic

sensibilities of the Dave Clark

Five. Which is probably what

you’d expect from a band whose

guitarist is Robert Hodgens – né

Bobby Bluebell from the late,

great Bluebells – and whose

drummer is, um, Al Murray The

Pub Landlord (other members

are available).

If at times one longs for

a smoochy ballad or something

slinky in salsa mode, then one

will be disappointed; this album

is relentless like boots marching

while wearing boots. Fat Cops

are thunderous, and this debut

album, which sounds like 200

little boys fighting under

a blanket, galumphs along in fine

style and would have fit well on

any John Peel show from 1980

to 2003. Highly recommended.

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David Quantick

ROUND-UP: BLUES By Henry Yates

Watermelon Slim

Church Of The Blues

NORTHERN BLUES

With his fiery slide licks

and a vocal delivery like

a man chewing a toffee,

the Oklahoma veteran

holds the listener with

these pleasingly rough, likeably gruff

tracks. Top of the pile is Tax Man Blues, on

which Slim’s incredibly specific grumbling

about the minutiae of his pay cheque

seems less like a lyric, more like

a complaint to the accounts department.

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Joanne Shaw Taylor

Reckless Heart SONY/SILVERTONE

For Reckless Heart,

Taylor’s brief to

producer Al Sutton was

simple: all spit, no

polish. And this album

benefits enormously from the sense that it

could all spin off the tracks. Angry little

standouts like In The Mood, Creepin’ and

Bad Love all keep their foot down hard,

with the Brum guitarist’s soloing never

more molten, but the hooky, breezy soul-

rock of New 89 should keep Sony happy.

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Gary Hoey

Neon Highway Blues

PROVOGUE/MASCOT

In Gary Hoey’s hands,

well-worn blues shapes

have fresh potency. The

Massachusetts-born

guitarist’s talent for

hitting the right note keeps six-minute

slowie Mercy Of Love compelling, while the

bounce-blues of Still Believe In Love covers

its familiarity with a firework of a solo. Best

of all is Don’t Come Crying: a head-cutting

duel with Hoey’s 17-year-old son.

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Walter Trout

Survivor Blues PROVOGUE/MASCOT

By rights, Survivor

Blues should be

a posthumous release;

between them, Trout

and his band can boast

rogue livers, triple bypasses and

a thousand booze-sodden brushes with

oblivion. And that talent for escapology

not only gives Survivor Blues its title, it

also lifts a potentially workaday covers

album above its station, flooding every

track with hard-won soul.

Trout charts a canny tracklisting,

illuminating his own history with cult gems.

There’s a bruised take on his teenage

favourite, Jimmy Dawkins’s Me, My Guitar

And The Blues; a spacey, sotto voce salute

to his Bluesbreakers tenure with the

Mayall-penned Nature’s Disappearing.

Critically, Trout knows when to doff his cap

and when to deface his heroes – so Luther

Johnson’s Woman Don’t Lie is turned into

a dirty funk workout, while Be Careful How

You Vote is revved up with palpable spite,

Trout seemingly on the brink of breaking

from Sunnyland Slim’s lyric to tear strips

off the politicos.

These dead men walking make one hell

of a sound.

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JP Soars

Southbound I-95 SOARS HIGH

Like the interstate

highway of the title,

Southbound I-95 covers

plenty of ground. From

the Latin sway of Across

The Desert and the fireball 50s rock of The

Grass Ain’t Always Greener, to a scuttling

title track that outguns Misirlou and

a cover of Muddy’s Deep Down In Florida

that sounds like the Bottom theme played

by a mariachi band, it’s hardly cohesive, but

it’s a thrilling road-trip.

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AUS

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