Kevin Godley

★★★★ Muscle Memory STATE51 CONSPIRACY. CD/DL/LP

Now aged 74, and with no sign of a deserting muse, the 10cc man’s first solo release.

Kevin Godley (ex-Hot Legs, 10cc and Godley & Creme) has been making genre-skipping art for 50 years as a drummer, songwriter, inventor, video producer, film-maker, writer and visual artist. The 11 tracks here have been created in ‘remote collaboration’, Godley’s lyrics and melodies written over digitallyexchanged basic tracks from musicians both well-known and not. The words are splenetic and direct: topics such as race, gun law, the media, even the future of music and creativity itself, are all tackled with shape-shifting aplomb. The singing hits a clear melismatic vibrancy that echoes Scott Walker and lateperiod Bowie in some places, then a direct Mancunian drawl in others. The music, meanwhile, at its best on earworm opener Expecting A Message, percussive The Big Bang Theory or the sweeping melodicism of Periscope, is often compelling. David Buckley