John Butler

The Loyal Serpent

Diesel Park West frontman proves his point.

The suspicion that Diesel Park West’s sometimes difficult personal dynamic was hindering the band’s progress was laid bare by frontman John Butler’s solo album The Loyal Serpent in 1997.

It wasn’t that the songs on that album were notably different from those he’d written for the band, but the performances were less equivocal as Butler flexed his control.

There was a new found passion in his singing, reminiscent of Graham

Parker during his late-70s breakthrough. There was also a willingness to try things that would probably never have got past the group committee, such as the Phil Spector-lite arrangements on Maybe Tomorrow, or the bar-room blitz approach to Montpelier On Ice. The irony is that most of the members of Diesel Park West – who by then were on hiatus – played on the album.

The somewhat retro approach of The Loyal Serpent did not sit easily with the Britpop-obsessed media in the late 90s and the album got less attention than it deserved. But now it has been revived as a double vinyl album and features three additional tracks with a funky feel to them that add another dimension to an already broad album. Not that this would have improved its chances at the time.