Hugh Cornwell

Monster Sony

Grizzled punk survivor revisits his Stranglers years.

In the decades since he quit The Stranglers, Hugh Cornwell has reinvented himself as a novelist and prolific collaborator with the likes of Clem Burke, John Cooper Clarke, Tony Visconti and Steve Albini.

A collection of portrait songs based on famous and infamous figures in his life, from his mother Winifred to Evel Knievel and Robert Mugabe, Cornwell’s ninth solo album is a fairly straight singer-songwriter affair enlivened by a few wry gems, notably the Lou Reed homage/ pastiche Mister Leather.

The juicy bonus here is Restoration, a companion disc of vintage Stranglers tracks reworked into pareddown acoustic arrangements. Threaded with luminous fingerpicked guitar, Don’t Bring Harry and Goodbye Toulouse are both enhanced by their stark, Johnny Cash-style makeovers. But No More Heroes feels skimpy and flippant, while the gratingly clumsy lyric to Always The

Sun has not aged gracefully.

But despite variable quality control, Cornwell’s lugubrious croon grows more agreeably sonorous in his autumnal years.