Defiance Part 2: Fiction
SUN
7/10
FEW song writers have written as many songs about rock’n’roll as Ian Hunter. With Mott The Hoople there were “All The Way From Memphis”, “One Of The Boys”, “Ballad Of Mott The Hoople” and “Saturday Gigs”, and the habit continued when he left the band in 1974. Drop into almost any Hunter solo albums and there seems to be a song about music, from “I Get So Excited” on Ian Hunter to “Still Love Rock And Roll” on 2001’s Rant. That’s true right up to the present day when partway through excellent new album Defiance Part 2: Fiction, Hunter, now 84, declares “This Ain’t Rock And Roll”.
The song came out exactly a year ago, and the two albums are the result of a fruitful writing splurge during Covid. Hunter generally writes at home in Connecticut on piano or guitar, then hands the songs to Andy York for further development. The tracks are then pinged around the planet to Hunter’s peers: on there are contributions from Lucinda Williams, Joe Elliott, Taylor Hawkins, Jeff Beck, Johnny Depp and Brian May, plus members of Cheap Trick and Stone Temple Pilots.
