Older, still angry
The Skids commendably maintain their rage and energy, while Neil Young returns to form
POP
The Skids: Burning Cities
Nobad Records
Neil Young + Promise of the Real: The Visitor
Reprise
Black Rebel Motorcycle Club: Wrong Creatures
Vagrant
For those with the stamina and the appetite, the old age punk scene can be a pretty energetic place. Dunfermline punk veterans The Skids enjoyed their 40th anniversary year so much that they have extended celebrations into 2018 and, with the release of this first new album in more than 36 years, presumably won’t be retiring anytime soon.
Their brilliant guitarist Stuart Adamson died 16 years ago but his old compadres Richard Jobson, bassist Bill Simpson and drummer Mike Baillie have judiciously expanded the Skids family with the addition of Adamson’s Big Country wingman Bruce Watson and his son Jamie to the line-up.
On this occasion, honorary membership also goes to their producer and contemporary Youth, who has captured that brawny, bear-with-a-sore-head thrashing energy once more. As for the raw material, The Skids were always a cantankerous, questioning band, able to capture local and global concerns in their pugilistic punk protest songs.
Once again, they find themselves trying to make sense of turbulent times. The song titles alone - This Is Our World, Kings of the New World
Order – signal the same old but still relevant concerns. For Jobson and co, these are not the days for subtle intimations and they take their own advice to “shout it from the roofs, don’t be discreet” on A World On Fire, one of the album’s strongest vocal hooks, with Watson layering on the bagpipe guitar licks.
As before, spirit outweighs skill across their changing musical landscape, whether on the heart-on-sleeve war requiem Desert Dust, the unhinged garage rock urgency of Kaputt, the (relatively) haunting
Refugee or with the pacey, propulsive synth rocker Subbotnik, which sounds like a belligerent Shot by Both
Sides, resulting in an album which stays true to their legacy, offering a hearty greeting but baring a troubled soul. For a while back there it felt as if
Neil Young was the only musician raising a stink about anything – sadly, the music often stank along with it. Happily, he sounds in better shape on
The Visitor, his latest wildly eclectic – and, in some places, just wild – collaboration with current backing compadres Promise of the Real, a bunch of young(er) guns including Willie Nelson’s sons Lukas and Micah, which was released late last year but is now available on vinyl.
Once more, Young goes straight for the political jugular, re-appropriating Trump’s campaign catchphrase on Already Great, which combines a gnarly, grungy sound with melancholy harmonies, burnished psychedelic guitar, plus jazzy piano in a loose but powerful protest anthem. The thoughtful acoustic lament
Almost Always is standard Young territory but he also rap-rant-raves over the band’s light, soulful refrain on the distorted blues of Fly By Night
Deal and plays the fairground barker riding the sonic carousel on the playful Latin-flavoured Carnival, while MOR number Children of
Destiny is, by turns, a booming, brassy anthem and beseeching, string-driven ballad from a steadfast artist determined to keep on rocking in the free world.
Having “toured till the wheels came off ”, Californian leather boys (and girl) Black Rebel Motorcycle Club have simply checked the air and filled up their trusty machine with the same old indie rock’n’roll fuel on their eighth album – who knew there was life left in their wasted frames? Much of Wrong Creatures just sounds like out-takes from the latest Jesus & Mary Chain album and a couple of overlong numbers sag in the middle, but the sultry croon of Haunt, melodramatic swell of Echo, bluesy
Little Thing Gone Wild and soused
psychedelic lurch of Circus Bazooko revive the overall dynamics.
Young goes straight for the political jugular, re-appropriating Trump’s campaign catchphrase on Already Great