Sir Bob and his rat pack return to BOOMTOWN!
THE last time the Boomtown Rats made a new album, Bob Geldof was still known solely as a rock singer.
That was in May 1984, seven months before Band Aid’s Do They Know It’s Christmas pioneered the modern charity single, paved the way for Live Aid and launched Geldof on a new path as a global activist.
He still busies himself calling those in power to account with his characteristic motormouthed bluntness. But he has also re-formed his old band and now, 36 years after that last effort, In The Long Grass, he and three of the other original group members have released Citizens Of Boomtown, an album of irreverent glam rock and dirty rhythm and blues.
The return of the Boomtown Rats, who initially reunited to play the Isle of Wight Festival in 2013, is something of a personal crusade for Geldof, 68, who has also overseen a new Citizens Of Boomtown documentary too.
A book of his lyrics, Tales Of Boomtown Glory, is also published today through Faber Music.
He is realistic about a comeback that is unlikely to revisit the commercial peaks scaled between 1978’s Rat Trap and 1980’s Banana Republic, a run of classic singles that included I Don’t Like Mondays and helped to make the Rats one of the biggest bands here and further afield.
‘This is a celebration of four people,’ says Geldof. (Johnnie Fingers and Gerry Cott are not involved). ‘It’s something I can’t do without, because when I’m on stage I’m free. When you see this cartwheeling simian, I think I’m being elegant and sexy. But I don’t care, because there’s this noise behind me that powers some kind of sensibility.’
Citizens Of Boomtown was produced by the band’s bassist Pete Briquette and initially put together in Briquette’s West London home with Geldof, guitarist Garry Roberts and drummer Simon Crowe. Homespun and retro, its strength lies in a sense of unfinished business finally being attended to.
There are nods aplenty to the heroes that sparked Geldof’s curiosity in the 1970s. Trash Glam Baby is a scuzzy rocker that makes references to the New York Dolls and fashion house Biba. It wouldn’t have sounded out of place on Bowie’s Ziggy Stardust. Passing Through is a lovely ballad that owes a little to Lou Reed.
The demise of The Boomtown Rats’ original incarnation came about when they began following, rather than setting, trends in the mid1980s, unable to alight on a signature style.
They were at their most convincing in their early days as a new-wave rhythm and blues act, and they resurrect that sound on several tracks here. Monster Monkeys is a swamp blues in the style of the Beatles’ Come Together, and Here’s A Postcard is a tuneful pop number. The misfires occur on K.I.S.S. and Get A Grip, pointless detours into electronic garage rock.
But it’s hard not to be won over by a return that’s rough around the edges but also as enjoyable as 1978’s A Tonic For The Troops. It finishes with the autobiographical Boomtown Rats, a faux disco track that’s silly but catchy.
Geldof has poured his anguish into his songwriting before, most notably on his solo album Sex, Age & Death. There is nothing as raw as that here, just the sound of four old friends rediscovering their mojo. In the Chinese year of the rat, that feels about right.
AS ONE of the leading country acts, male-female duo The Shires (pictured below) have already notched up two top-three albums and been honoured by the American Country Music Association.
But singer-guitarist Ben Earle and fellow vocalist Crissie Rhodes have yet to break through in the States and their fourth album has clearly been made with one eye on potential US sales.
Where they once put a quirky Home Counties spin on the spirit of Nashville, they now embrace Americana with Thank You Whiskey, a Tennessee drinking song, and Independence Day, a Fourth of July break-up number.
If that sounds incongruous, Ben and Crissie still trade vocal lines with elegant ease. And while there’s a surfeit of sentimentality in their new material, Good Years is bookended by two of the duo’s strongest songs to date in Lightning Strikes and the rugged ballad Crazy Days.