HARD STUFF ROCK REVIEWS

14 pages

100% rock

Classic Rock Ratings

A Classic

EXCELLENT

VERY GOOD

GOOD

ABOVE AVERAGE

AVERAGE

BELOW PAR

A DISAPPOINTMENT

PANTS

PISH

The Damned

The Rockfield Files EP SEARCH & DESTROY/UMG

Original punks still buzzing.

Bands who have been going for ever often compete with themselves to see which version has the most definitive line-up, and The Damned are no exception.

For this new EP, recorded at (you guessed) Rockfield Studios in 2019, the band includes Dave Vanian, Captain Sensible and Paul Gray, missing only Rat Scabies for that Strawberries feel forever. With production by Tom Dalgety, its four songs encapsulate The Damned at their current best, being both spooky (Black Is The Night) and, er, about bees (Keep ‘Em Alive).

With a sparkiness that was at times lacking on their previous album, The Rockfield Files is an excellent addition to the catalogue of a band who should have gone to pot about 30 years ago but are still full of vitality.

David Quantick

Public Enemy

What You Gonna Do When The Grid Goes Down? DEF JAM

Still fighting the power, with help from some famous friends.

Veteran hip-hop heavyweights Public Enemy have followed an erratic, dispiriting career path in the 21st century. But their first album in 22 years for their iconic former label Def Jam is a meaty, starry affair featuring a pangenerational guest list including George Clinton, Questlove, Nas, Ice-T, Run DMC and more.

Recycling several tracks from their 2017 download-only collection Nothing Is Quick In The Desert, Chuck D and Flavor Flav find themselves urgently back in lockstep with the zeitgeist in an age of rage, Trump, pandemic paranoia and escalating police brutality. The boorish, sweary piledriver polemic State Of The Union (STFU) is the most overtly anti-Trump statement here, verbally battering America’s current clown-in-chief with sledgehammer subtlety. But elsewhere a more nuanced, tender, self-referential nostalgia prevails, from the Beastie Boysassisted Public Enemy Number Won to Flav’s heartfelt tributes to lost comrades on Rest In Beats.

Between propulsive rap-metal guitar riffs and booming foghorn sermons, the killer cut here is a new collective remake of PE’s immortal 1989 anthem Fight The Power, updated and rebooted with references to George Floyd, Breonna Taylor and the Black Lives Matter movement.

Stephen Dalton

Nils Lofgren Band

Weathered CATTLE TRACK ROAD

Live album recorded prelockdown with E Street Band and Crazy Horse members.

If ever it felt good to listen to a live album, it’s now; the memories of times that might not swing back for a while.

Weathered is red-raw but represents vividly the intimacy of the gigs supporting his previous studio album, Blue With Lou. There are out-takes from that record, including Too Blue To Play, a Dylanesque trek down the dwindling dirt paths of age, taking in the long rear view. But the set draws from older Lofgren material too, including the bourbon vintage of Daddy Dream, on which Tom Lofgren, Kevin McCormick and Andy Newmark get to shine. Lofgren is a chatty performer between songs, and the excellent, sweary Ringo Starr story with which he introduces Girl In Motion is worth the price of the album alone. Loveliest is Tender Love, a wistful vocal duet with Cindy Mazelle.

David Stubbs

Tyler Bryant & The Shakedown

Pressure SNAKEFARM

Backed into a corner, in the fourth round the Shakedown come out fighting.

Recorded in his basement under lockdown, with the band down to a three-piece (Bryant played bass himself), this album could have been lowkey. But no. It began as one song – the upbeat Crazy Days – recorded in response to the pandemic flipping the world upside-down, grew into an EP, and emerged as a fully-fledged fourth album.

By turns heavy (Pressure and Fuel), bluesy (the barbed-wire slide-filled Hitchhiker) and funky (Wildside), its palette of styles is richer than on previous records. Okay, Automatic echoes early Aerosmith, Misery follows Nazareth’s take on Woody Guthrie’s Vigilante Man… but even the bluesy Loner and the T Bone Burnett-style acoustic Coastin’ sound fresh.

Three songs feature Bryant’s wife Rebecca Lovell (of rootsrock duo Larkin Poe) on vocals, and Blackberry Smoke’s Charlie Starr sings on Holdin’ My Breath, but it peaks with the poignant, soul-searching beauty of Like The Old Me.

Bryant has truly come of age with this record.

Neil Jeffries

Low Cut Connie

Private Lives CONTENDER/MIDCITIZEN

Soul-drenched rock’n’roll with a soft centre.

Like Jerry Lee Lewis and Ben Folds before him, Low Cut Connie frontman Adam Weiner, backed by an ever-changing cast of supporting characters, has built his reputation on beating seven bells out of his longsuffering piano during their kinetic live shows. But despite a party-band reputation, there are tears of a clown soaking Private Lives.

Slathered in soul and taking rhythmic cues from the birth of rock’n’roll, it’s a collection of portraits of all-American fuckups, lives that are frayed around the edges and unravelling rapidly. Tearful state-of-the-nation piano ballad , clearly influenced by Elton John, aces ’), while the beautifully vulnerable roots for day-to-day survival, for seeking out the light, in a cruel and indifferent world. It’s this latter sense of indefatigable positivity that shines through, a sense of togetherness engendered by a celebration of classic, no-nonsense rock’n’roll.