Ha! Ha! Ha! - Ultravox!

Provenance: Like the dog who returns to his vomit, I once again decided to trust a review in Classic Rock magazine. However, this time - this time, guys - instead of just saying "these guys make a soulful rock racket, like Bad Company partying with the Doobie Brothers" or some other banal shit, they actually made the first three Ultravox! records (they came in a bundle) sound interesting.

When I read the description that they'd often been dismissed as a "punk Roxy Music", I was all in. This, I was told, was 'good Ultravox!', before they dropped the exclamation mark, gained a Midge Ure and became shite.

Review: If you only know Ultravox as the band behind 'Vienna' and 'Dancing With Tears In My Eyes', Ha! Ha! Ha! will come as quite a shock. Far from the mannered, slickly delivered synth-pop that defined their most successful era, the Ultravox! on display here are a bunch of perverted sickos with out of tune guitars and a clutch of cracking songs. First track 'ROckWrok' is as fluid, messy and enjoyable as the sexual practices gleefully delineated and, masked by the frantic delivery, possibly the filthiest song to ever gain airplay on BBC Radio 1. Oh, and in case you didn't realise that you were dealing with capital-a Art, the name is a punning take on a Marcel Duchamp-produced magazine.

What I have come to sincerely love about Ha! Ha! Ha! is the energy that pulses throughout the album; an energy that threatens to teeter over into anarchy but reels back from the edge at just the right moment. It sounds like it was put down mostly live (I have no idea - but it doesn't sound like its replete with overdubs) and captures Ultravox! at their most freewheeling. If frontman John Foxx has a weakness (it's certainly not his name) it's that he's sometimes trying too hard to act cool, but that's largely offset by lyrics speaking of disaffection, fin-de-siecle nihilism and sex. Is it pretentious? Sure, but it's a lot of fun. It's a gas hearing Foxx mash-up Bryan Ferry's strange bleat with guttersnipe polemicising, and the squeaking, skronking instrumentation never seems less than demented.

Whilst one can certainly hear Roxy Music in the mix, as well as Joe Strummer and wisps of Kraftwerk, it's also nice to see where the legacy of Ha! Ha! Ha! lives on in popular music. Listening to the post-glitter stomp of 'While I'm Still Alive' (a favourite of mine) always brings to mind Franz Ferdinand, whilst (more obscurely) the off-kilter tunings could easily have influenced King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard's Flying Microtonal Banana album.

Also, I know I use the term 'glamorous demimonde' far too much (if I've used it once, it's too much) but - dear reader - it is entirely appropriate. For all the thrust of the music, the pose on display is a cross between a decadent ennui and Mitteleuropean (lol, me using words again) elegance. The two most obvious examples - and it's probably no coincidence that the Kraftwerk imprimatur is most evident on these tracks - are 'The Man Who Dies Every Day' and the mighty 'Hiroshima Mon Amour'. It's also curious that, Kraftwerk aside, the other big influence both share is cinema; it's hard to hear the opening lines of 'The Man...' and not think of a Harry Lime figure stood turned away, shrouded in mist; and 'Hiroshima Mon Amour' shares its name with the 1959 Alain Resnais film of the same name (of course - you knew that, right?).

It is perhaps perverse of me to rank 'Hiroshima Mon Amour' as a highlight, because formally speaking it is the one song that points towards Ultravox's revivification as purveyors of sleek, stilted melodrama. Why is it good then? Because whilst it starts out with a bipping drum-machine intro that threatens to turn into an OMD single, it soon morphs into something strangely affecting and beautiful. Each verse is a miniature painting, or perhaps a still from an arthouse movie, a moment of clarity not so much captured as poised. I've used the word 'elegant' before in this review, and it really does apply to 'Hiroshima Mon Amour', from the mournful saxophones to the swooning melody.

And in any case, if I am being perverse, that fits in nicely with a good portion of what Ha! Ha! Ha! serves up. What a wonderful chronicle of humanity's ability to sound sad, jaded and deliriously happy all at the same time.

Ace Of Spades - Motorhead

Provenance: Do I really have to say anything here? It's fucking Motorhead.

Review: The first Motorhead (not doing the umlaut, sorry) album I bought was a live bootleg with terrible sound quality. Every song sounded the same. Having said that, it was still one of the most exciting things I'd heard up until that point.

This was to be my second Motorhead purchase. Why Ace Of Spades? Because it was called 'Ace Of Spades' and had the song 'Ace Of Spades' on it. I really, really like the song 'Ace Of Spades'.

To these ears, 'Ace Of Spades' is the perfect distillation of everything that made Motorhead work. It rattles along at a breakneck pace, an aggressive rip-snorter of a beast unshackled from the bound of propriety and gentility. Like the best rock 'n' roll, it boils everything down to the most basic constituent parts - drums, bass, guitar, voice. There's no dicking about with flutes or mandolins, no vocal harmonies, nary an attempt at a diminished seventh chord. And the vocals? The purest, man-don't-give-a-fuck skull-grin stoicism gutter poetry. It's Rudyard Kipling's 'If-', were Kipling a Ladbroke Grove speed-freak with a pornographically loud bass guitar. 'Ace Of Spades' has the ability to beat the crap out of you within ten seconds if played at the correct volume. I shall never grow bored of it.

You know what's great about Motorhead? They really are, as Lemmy often claimed, a rock 'n' roll band. No doubt they're heavy as all hell, but that's not metal I'm hearing in their sound; it's the thrum of Eddie Cochran, shot through with amphetamines, smoke and rust. The difference is in the dynamic range of the instrumentation - first wave rock 'n' roll often featured thin-sounding guitars and drums that pattered away relatively unobtrusively (when used at all), with vocals and often saxophone to fatten out the sound. Here, drums and an outrageously overdriven bass perform fill out this part of the mix; nor do guitars no Lemmy's inimitable vocals stray too far from the middle, either.

The result? Not a huge amount of depth, which means the only truly trebly sound - the hi-hat - really jumps out at you. Drummer Phil 'Philthy Animal' Taylor rides that rather loose hi-hat relentlessly, which, coupled with the tempo, creates a clattery, splashy effect that is every bit as important as Lemmy's lawnmower-grind bass. Also, I should add that Lemmy's whiskey-and-razors vocals were absolutely essential, and that he was terribly underrated in that department. Try to imagine anybody else singing Motorhead songs - it feels ridiculous.

Look, here's the deal - if you like what the title track brought to the table, you'll like the rest of the album. Every single diesel-powered bastard of a tune on here exudes the same grimy scuzziness as the one that preceded it. Last time out I reviewed Dio's Holy Diver which for all its merits comes across as rather bloodless in comparison to Ace Of Spades. The Motorhead universe is not one where the pomp of vaguely silly Tolkeinesque fantasy gets a look in. Sentiment is eschewed entirely on Ace Of Spades - 'Bite The Bullet', 'The Chase Is Better Than The Catch' and 'Love Me Like A Reptile' all seem to revel in an almost animalistic view of sexual relations (articulated most clearly on the latter, even if only two of the three examples given in the lyrics are actually reptilians). One gets the impression, from a mere sound recording, that this is a band that could beat the shit out of you and your mates, and would certainly take a piss on you as you lay prone.

I normally don't talk about any bonus tracks on albums I own - they were often omitted from the original collections for a reason - but these are mint. 'Dirty Love' was the b-side to 'Ace Of Spades' and is every bit as good as anything else they recorded in the period. Meanwhile, 'Please Don't Touch' and 'Emergency' come from the St Valentine's Day Massacre EP recorded jointly with Girlschool. Hearing Lemmy and Kim McAuliffe duetting on the former, a cover of a Johnny Kid and the Pirates song, is an absolute, unadulterated joy and further underscores Motorhead's classic rock 'n' roll DNA.

I saw Motorhead live many, many times. Fortunately I got all my experiences in before Lemmy's very public demise, which resulted in truncated shows and confused performances. They were one of those bands who went for the throat every time; there are few finer things in life then witnessing Motorhead firing on all cylinders, tearing full-tilt through 'Overkill' or 'Bomber', pummelling you in the chest with the sonic earthquake they generated. What a band, what a singular band - and what an album.

Holy Diver - Dio

Provenance: Honestly? The first time I became aware of Dio (and, by extension, frontman Ronnie James Dio) it was due to South Park. Even then, in what was a scene played for laughs (Dio play the school prom), I distinctly recall me and my brother thinking the song being played - 'Holy Diver' - was pretty sweet.

Not too long after that, I attended a UK show on Alice Cooper's Brutal Planet tour. What a gig! Not only do I absolutely love the Brutal Planet album, but I was also treated to two stellar support acts - Orange Goblin and Dio. The Goblin rocked out, but things went up a notch when Dio hit the stage with 'Sunset Superman'. Ronnie James Dio was so, so good.

Now feels like a good time to revisit this platter as, in a rather ghoulish act of musical grave robbery, a band of former Dio musicians are about to embark on a tour fronted by a hologram of the late singer. I'm sure that'll go down well, lads, and won't look at all creepy.

Review: Here's the deal, mateys. Prior to forming his own band releasing the album under the microscope for today, Holy Diver, Ronnie James Dio had already fronted two legendary hard rock / metal bands in Rainbow and Black Sabbath, performing on landmark albums for both. When relationships went south with his fellow Sabs, he joined up with bassist Jimmy Bain (formerly Rainbow, would later die on a cruise), hotshot axeman Vivian Campbell (who'd go on to join Def Leppard, lol) and tub-thumper Vinny Appice (everyone - honestly, I may have even played in a band with him. You may have even played in a band with him) to form his own minstrel troupe. Fittingly for such a modest and humble individual, he named it Dio.

With their first album, it's fair to say, they knocked it out of the park. In fact, this release is so revered in some circles that even the seemingly minor offence of a lackadaisical performance of the title track is enough to earn you a severe beating. You don't fuck with Dio, and you certainly don't fuck with 'Holy Diver'.

Such is the magnificence of the title track that I always forget that it isn't the track the leads off the album. That honour goes to 'Stand Up And Shout', which I have to admit doesn't stir me in the same way as the rest of the material does. It whips along at a fair old clip and there's plenty of pinched harmonics in the soloing to keep me happy; ah, perhaps it suffers from its juxtaposition to the most ludicrous, imperious, mighty metal song of all...



...HOLY DIVER!!

Honest to God, you could stick this on in any metal oriented bar and cause a white-out from all the dandruff flying around due to the outbreak of spontaneous headbanging. It captures everything that is quintessential about the Dio experience; quasi-operatic vocals, nonsensical lyrics, strident guitars, RIDE THE TIGER, propulsive drumming, YOU CAN SEE HIS STRIPES BUT YOU KNOW HE'S CLEAN, serviceable bass playing and, as you can see from the embedded video above, a terrible music video. I'm not exaggerating when I say that if I were comatose or even dead, I'd start giving 'the horns' (which, incidentally, Dio claimed he popularised in metal) if 'Holy Diver' was being played to me.

(A note on the video - when it comes to terrible metal videos, a topic that is of enduring fascination to me and my pal James, 'Holy Diver' ranks right up there. Whether it's the lamest combat sequence committed to tape (1.05), the cardboard cut-out demon (1.37) or the incredibly nonchalant blacksmith (who's just forged a presumably magical sword - 2.30), it stands out in a very crowded field. It's probably not the worst, but earns its status by being associated with such an iconic track).

This isn't an album that revels in layers or textures; aside from the odd keyboard flourish here and there (but oh! What a flourish it turns out to be!), it's a fairly meat 'n' potatoes affair with regards to instrumentation. Unimaginative? Possibly, but like its near contemporary, Judas Priest's British Steel, Holy Diver's stripped-back approach works because it gives the band's most extraordinary elements - Dio's rich, stentorian, almost fruity voice and Campbell's hyperactive guitar - the space to stretch out. Such is the strength of 'Don't Talk To Strangers' and 'Straight Through The Heart' that they would still sound alright in the hands of lesser talents, but the contributions of Dio and Campbell elevate them to the status of minor classics. It's just the shame they ended up hating each other.

Two final things - first, that keyboard flourish I mentioned? It's the two-finger riff to 'Rainbow In The Dark', one of the most bad-ass tunes Dio ever did, the song 'The Final Countdown' wishes it was. The second point - and 'Rainbow In The Dark' is emblematic of this - is how RJD managed to conjure up an entire fantastical universe of wizards 'n' sorcery with a vocabulary of about thirty words. If I was being charitable I would say that Dio employed a Bolanesque, impressionistic approach to wordsmithery (that whole "hubcap diamond star halo" deal). However, so sparing is he with the actual verbiage he chooses to employ that one can genuinely play 'Dio bingo' with the band's discography.

That being said, Holy Diver deserves its place in the pantheon of metal albums. Its flash-guitar histrionics meant it fit right alongside, for example, Blizzard of Ozz (which was, of course, the solo debut by another Sabbath alumnus) but at times hearkened back to a classic 70s hard rock sound; 'Invisible' wouldn't have sounded out of place on Rainbow's Long Live Rock 'N' Roll at all. And that voice, in all its clarity and melodrama, was a wonder to behold. I was lucky enough to see Dio play Holy Diver in its entirety at my university, and later that night I got the man himself to sign my CD booklet. I put the booklet in my jeans pocket, and later in the week took those jeans to the launderette; net result, my treasured RJD autograph became a soggy, pulpy mess - an apt metaphor for some of the band's later releases. Nonetheless, Holy Diver remains a shiny diamond, like the eyes of a cat in the black and blue.

Fireball - Deep Purple

Provenance: Deep Purple feel like a rite of passage for anyone who professes to be a fan of heavy rock. There are certain bands - Led Zeppelin, Black Sabbath and Deep Purple off the top of my head - which one is expected to be able to speak about somewhat intelligently, at the least. Being utterly conformist in almost every regard, I have unquestioningly accepted this orthodoxy and have subsequently amassed a small collection of Deep Purple albums.

The problem is, I don't really like Deep Purple.

Their music, I admit, can be sensational. In discussions I've always advanced Ian Paice as one of rock's great drummers, and I love the way Ritchie Blackmore borrowed as much from the classical music palette (most obviously the harmonic minor scale) in his soloing as he did from more traditional blues-rock sources. That said, I don't think the individual elements of Deep Purple's sound always meshed together successfully.

However, away from the strictly musical side, in a business where arrested development is positively encouraged, Deep Purple have always seemed uniquely petty. Stupid squabbles, questionable decisions and unpalatable personalities litter their history. And although it shouldn't, I've allowed this side of Deep Purple to colour my thoughts on the music, making their pomposity and pretentiousness even more risible than it already is.

But here at Swinetunes we're (NB: I, there's only one person typing this dreck) all about giving bands a fair shake. Let's see if Fireball stands or falls on its own merits.

Review: The good news: Fireball kicks out the jams with a stone cold classic in its title track. A strange, whooshing intro (apparently an air conditioning unit), some badass drumming and then we're galloping away. It feels taut, muscular and focused - qualities that rarely, alas, resurface on the rest of the album.

If 'Fireball' exemplifies everything that works, track two, 'No No No', is paradigmatic as to what I find dissatisfying about the album. The latter is ponderous, meandering and downright boring - aiming for a kind of heavy funk-rock sound, it has about as much soul as me dancing to a Trojan box-set after sinking a few Tyskies. Everything all sounds a little phoned in - not just the lyrics, which have been uniformly awful throughout Purple's lifespan - especially the late Jon Lord's Hammond organ noodling. It goes nowhere and takes a long time getting there.

Okay, I like 'Demon's Eye'. It has a dark pulse to it and a swaggering guitar riff that repeats throughout. I'd probably like it even more if Uriah Heep did it. (Deep Purple are, of course, a poor man's Uriah Heep.) So maybe I'm being a bit too harsh, yeah? You're allowed one or two clunkers on an album. The problem is that after 'Demon's Eye' wraps, things get worse. Much, much worse.

I know I gave Europe a bit of a shoeing when I reviewed them but I would take anything off that album - even 'Cherokee' - over the abortive mess that is 'Anyone's Daughter'. It almost feels like a bespoke attempt to provide me with reasons to absolutely fucking hate everybody involved in creating it. Nothing says 'mid 70s rock excess' than a bunch of guys indulging themselves with the most half-arsed attempt at country music "hilarity" than 'Anyone's Daughter'. The intro is literally the band playing like shit. Once it gets into gear, little improves - horribly unfunny lyrics, hammily delivered (even by his standards) by Ian Gillan, terrible sub-Chet Atkins guitar from Blackmore and embarrassingly plinky-plunky cod-barrelhouse ivory-tickling from Lord. A sense of 'this'll do' pervades - it's flabby, half-baked and seemingly tossed-off as an afterthought.

From this point onwards, this is, for me, the overriding sensation I take away from Fireball. Once upon a time rock music was young, vital, dangerous and exciting. I'm not atavistic with rock music; I accept and embrace the flavours it took on as it grew up and grew outwards, but at some point one of its offshoots morphed into this lumpen, portentous, grim-faced, self-important masturbation. It's not as if the musicianship is even particularly breathtaking. Is anyone really impressed with that interminable volume-swell guitar solo in 'Fools'? It neither serves to demonstrate Blackmore's virtuosity nor does it create a mood. It's just an irritant.

So that's Fireball - two good songs and a heaping spoonful of pompous crap. Honestly, go and listen to Europe instead; at least those boys sound like they were having a modicum of fun.

Hot Buttered Soul - Isaac Hayes

Provenance: Like many people of my generation (the greatest generation, incidentally, even if previous cohorts have tried to assume that mantle) my first exposure to Isaac Hayes came about thanks to South Park. Even then, I didn't know that Chef was being voiced by a legitimate musician.

Unbeknownst to me, I had also been exposed to Hayes as a performer thanks to the short-lived Walkers branded 'Sundog Cheesy Popcorn' (what a name), or more accurately, its terrible TV advert.

I'm guessing that a combination of South Park and Shaft finally sparked a bulb to go off in my head, compelling me to acquire a double-disc 'best of' compilation. In turn, this led to me buying Hot Buttered Soul because who doesn't want a sprawling nineteen minute version of 'By the Time I Get to Phoenix' in their music collection?

Review: I can tell you one guy who doesn't appreciate Isaac Hayes' trademark extended jams - my former housemate Ben. He went to Womad 2007 with his girlfriend and upon his return saw fit to complain that Isaac Hayes "didn't really sing much", instead that his band kept playing "really long instrumentals" whilst Hayes muttered "love, love" every now and again. Essentially, what Ben is describing is pretty much every classic Hayes release, but I think the poor lad was expecting a bit more 'oomph' from proceedings.

I, however, went into Hot Buttered Soul with open eyes and so it's no surprise that I love this album. It's certainly one that requires a specific mood to enjoy; I wouldn't wish to start my day to it, nor blast it whilst driving to my regular five-a-side game. This is evening music, late night music even, designed to lull and seduce, creating a mood slowly and deliberately. It builds, builds, gets hotter and hotter, then returns to the simmer just when you're expecting an explosion of release. The first track, twelve minutes of 'Walk On By' (a song I have unsuccessfully tried to introduce as a football chant - is there anything more pathetic than a lone drunk man, keeping time on an advertising hoarding, demonstrating that at least he knows all the words, if not how to carry a tune?), is archetypal. It starts quietly, unobtrusively even, but pulls you along with a languid groove punctuated by bravado horns. Whilst this is going on, lush orchestration is being dripped into proceedings, until before you know it eleven minutes have passed and you're lost in a maelstrom of music, thick, dense and delicious. It's quite amazing.

In terms of precedent, I had only heard one other guy who could perform this trick - the high-low slow burn - as effectively, the bluesman Freddie King. Much to my frustration I can't find the performance on CD or online, but damn it, I certainly heard it; the intro seemingly goes on and on, the band threatening (or teasing) a crescendo before slipping back down the gears. All the while, King's guitar is weaving in and out of Hammond organ lines. The payoff, when it finally comes, is immense - a stinging guitar lick and King virtually howling just two words - 'How long' - and I'm not kidding when it makes you want to punch the air.

The most obvious equivalent to 'Walk On By' on the album is the aforementioned 'By the Time I Get to Phoenix', the evergreen Jimmy Webb number. If anything, it proceeds at pace even more considered than 'Walk On By', but does include one of Hayes' raps that, along with his masterful arrangements and lengthy jams, came to define his sound. (For my more youthful readers, by 'rap' I'm talking about a long spoken word introduction that is not necessarily performed rhythmically, nor does it have to rhyme. In Hayes' case, these were often meditations upon love, relationships and loss. He does them very well, too, imbuing his deep baritone with emotion and character as he narrates for almost seven minutes before easing into song.)

The two other tracks (yes, there are a grand total of four songs on Hot Buttered Soul) are almost blueprints of the Isaac Hayes technique in microcosm. 'Hyperbolicsyllabicsesquedalymistic' (I'm only typing that once lads) is the hardest driving, funkiest cut with sassy female backing vocals but even then a good portion of its ten minute running time is given over to a choppy piano solo. 'One Woman', meanwhile, begins almost tentatively, like some kind of hip lullaby; by degrees it strengthens and flexes, concluding as a full-bore, string-drenched soul-stirrer.

In summation, there is one word I haven't yet used but has never been far from my mind as I listened, and that's 'hypnotic'. There are others that certainly apply, like 'languorous', 'sultry', 'sexy' or even 'peculiar', but the mesmeric quality of hearing songs crawling from a state of amorphous sparsity towards something that sounds, frankly, massive, is a hell of a trip. In its own way, despite possessing few of its overt trappings, Hot Buttered Soul is a slice of psychedelia, albeit one that exists within its own category. Certainly it would go on to influence other artists, most obviously Barry White, but few could replicate the aurally overwhelming sublimity of Isaac Hayes when he was cooking with gas.

By the way - Isaac Hayes always looked the part. Sunglasses, gold chains, a metal mesh shirt - this guy was the complete package. And he knew it. Just check this superb footage from Wattstax '73. Not bad, eh?

The Final Countdown - Europe

Provenance: I bought this off a bloke for 50p, twelve or so years ago.

Review: I would like a refund.

Whilst, proverbially, curiosity is a slayer of felines, it was also the motivation behind me forgoing a can of Diet Coke to instead purchase Europe's magnum opus. After all, it contains that one track that even the least rock-conversant could recognise. As I sat down to write this review it struck me that hitherto this very moment I have only given this album one or two spins.

Over a decade on, I realise why. Please, feel free to fill in this gap with your own Europe / Brexit joke, because even the startlingly real prospect that the UK is flushing its economy and international good will down the john is less horrific than The Final Countdown.

To be fair, there were a couple of tracks that didn't induce the kind of metaphysical despair that Kafka merely hinted at. 'Rock The Night' is approaching competent for a big production hair metal number and...uh, that's it. I'm revising 'couple' down to 'a single song'. And lest you think I'm taking a kick at an easy target, bear in mind that I gave Faster Pussycat a pretty positive review (notwithstanding their questionable stance towards sexual activity with minors), and will no doubt be swooning over Ratt, Warrant and Dokken in the near future. I tend to like this bollocks. But not Europe, or at the very least, not The Final Countdown.

How did 'Carrie' become a hit? It's overwrought and boring. How did 'Ninja' (the second-worst ninja-related music title I own) or 'Time Has Come' make it past even the most cursory quality control? Little wonder that guitarist John Norum, the only one who demonstrates any flair on this release, quit soon after, claiming that the guitars had been buried under banks of keyboards. It's just a shame that upon completion The Final Countdown wasn't immediately buried under twenty metres of concrete, thus neutralising the radioactivity of its shittiness.

If I had to pick a standout for the most ball-achingly terrible moment on the album I'm going to go for 'Cherokee'. May I digress a little? Back in 2012 my partner was able to join me in the UK just in time for the Queen's Diamond Jubilee. I'd been living in this town for about two months, my partner for a week, and we were intrigued to see how the greybeards of the local council thought best to mark sixty years of Elizabeth Regina. I am sure Her Majesty would have been thrilled that it was basically a laser show set to 'The Final Countdown'.

In the same manner, Joey Tempest (lead vocals) thought a fitting way to commemorate the Trail of Tears was through the medium of butt rock. 'Cherokee' begins with what I can only assume is some kind of 'tribal' drumming, but done in so ham-fisted a manner that you wonder if the song is a piss-take. At which point you remember this is The Final Countdown, and it's no doubt meant in all earnestness. Generations of trauma, borne of a people torn from their birthright and rounded up like cattle, are perfectly realised and sensitively depicted through faux-orchestral synths and wailin' solos. I hope that the First Nations people of today are able to seek some comfort or solace in a song that sounded like it was rejected from Magnum's Vigilante album for being too limp.

And what of the title track, deemed by my town council to be fit for a queen? Well guys, I've got news for you; it's rump. If you like crappy, parping keyboard bombast married to some of the most idiotic lyrics ever penned by man or beast (there are, I suspect, apes that could do better) then 'The Final Countdown' is for you. If, however, the parts of your brain that process sensory information are halfway functional then you'll find a spot of waterboarding to be the more pleasurable alternative.

The Final Countdown is only forty minutes, but forty long minutes that transmogrifies your existence into a seemingly eternal waking nightmare. Which, fair play, is pretty strong stuff for a mere fifty pence. It's a pity that I'm allowing Europe to overshadow my almost completely positive impressions of Sweden (I've visited a number of times - let me tell you, the strawberries are a delight) so I'm going to go and cleanse my palate with a spot of Opeth and Vilhelm Moberg, lest I start ranting about blue passports, fishing quotas and the like. Adjö!

Hot Shots: #11 - The Knickerbockers - Lies

I'm a huge fan of the Nuggets compilation, and you should be too. How about this hypercharged cut of ersatz Beatle-boogie? Just one of many, many treats to be found on the untouchable, original Nuggets anthology.

Not only is the song great, but this performance is superb. I know they're miming, but this video shows what can be done with a couple of cameras, a tiny stage and a clutch of hip-swinging teens in tight sweaters. It's just so kinetic, energetic and dare I say it, exciting. Has rock music seemed quite as fun since?

Handsworth Revolution - Steel Pulse

Provenance: Haven't a clue. I bought this from an HMV at some point within the last five years. It was probably on special offer and I thought it might be worth a punt. That's some cool album artwork, after all.

Review: I can't pretend to know what life could be like in late 1970s Handsworth, having grown up in 1990s Bournemouth. I originally come from a place in Greater London called Hayes, which many in my family still call home. My parents grew up in Hayes and, before I was born, lived for a while in nearby Southall. It shares something in common with Handsworth: during the 1981, both experienced riots sparked off by racial tensions. Those in Handsworth were set off by rumours of a march by the National Front, whilst Southall's disturbances were in response to a planned Oi! concert in the Hambrough Tavern pub.

Hit fast-forward to 2011 and parts of London are ablaze with rioting. I stand looking from the top floor of the hospital I work in as plumes of smoke ascend into the summer sky. I return home to see bars and supermarkets in genteel areas like Clapham boarded up in anticipation of violence. Rumour swirls that looters have left a treasure trove on Clapham Common as they seek to evade the police. A seldom-seen neighbour asks 'what shall we do?' and I shrug and produce a golf club. I take an evening walk down to Tooting and pass through the thoroughly middle-class preserve of Balham. I note that nothing is shuttered, although reports later emerge of smashed windows. It is 2011 and race is once again the tinder box, and the fatal shooting of a black man by armed police sparks unrest that will sweep across the country.

So it is now 2017 and things don't feel much better. The referendum on British membership of the EU saw one campaign group literally borrow from Third Reich propaganda to create a poster. Meanwhile, Donald Trump's ascent sees neo-Nazis rebranded as the 'alt-right' and their fashion choices are discussed by mainstream publications. So now I'm listening to the angry, defiant, questing Handsworth Revolution by the British reggae band Steel Pulse, and it's sounding fresher than ever. That's not to downplay the actual music itself, which is superb, but it would be silly to ignore the politics of Steel Pulse's debut, which are front and centre throughout. Putting it another way, the impact of the message has not diminished down the years.

So we have calls for social justice on the title track; 'Bad Man' begins sounding like a boast but mutates into a meditation on slavery; 'Soldiers' demands self-determination for Africans and the removal of the imperialist yoke; 'Prodigal Son' counsels a people to stay in touch with their culture and renew their knowledge; and it seems trite to hint at the gist of 'Ku Klux Klan'. Who could blame the guys in the band for rounding out the collection with the spacey 'Macka Splaff', which is unabashedly about the joys of smoking weed? Even Shakespeare leavened his tragedies with a few jokes.

The grooves are monstrous, the musicianship is top notch (I was especially taken by the delicate, Latin-tinged guitar on 'Prediction') and thus you could quite happily dig this album for all its surface qualities. It's a smashing reggae record. For my money though, Handsworth Revolution reveals its real charms when one tunes into the messages about unity, identity, history, race and spirituality. It's not altogether comfortable listening either, especially if you're a white guy from Bournemouth. Handsworth Revolution delivers a few home truths about my history that I may not want to hear, but certainly need to hear.

There's always hope - and so with 'Prediction', which envisages deliverance for the followers of Ras Tafari, so I'm going to allow myself to perceive a few green shoots. A man has led a General Election campaign on a solidly social-democratic manifesto and created the electoral upset of this century (domestically, at least). Those who sought to smear him as a terrorist sympathiser now find themselves propping up their rickety administration by cosying up to paleolithic bigots with much stronger links to terrorism. The hypocrisy stinks and it won't be tolerated as long as good people stay vigilant and press for a fairer, more tolerant society. To quote Steel Pulse, "Have some, have some faith! / The impossible have a habit of happening..."

Black and White - Tony Joe White

Provenance: The origins of where and how I first encountered Tony Joe White are now obscured by the mists of time.

I can definitely state that I was aware of the man and his music before September 2010, which I spent in the USA. Here's why:

a) I vividly recall hearing a god-awful song chronicling the downfall of some poor southron maiden or other set to the music of 'Willie and Laura Mae Jones' on the radio. I was near Nashville at the time.

b) I managed to finagle my way into a private function at Graceland, and the Elvis tribute band (no pressure there, lads) played 'Polk Salad Annie'.

c) I met a guy in Louisiana who claimed to have known Tony Joe White a little in his youth.

Don't get me wrong, my road trip around the Deep South wasn't some kind of extended Tony Joe White-themed promenade, he just happened to crop up a fair amount. I wish I hadn't encountered that re-write of 'Willie and Laura Mae Jones' though, because it was like an ice-pick to the ears. I've tried to locate it for this review but no dice, so if anybody knows what I'm talking about, please get in touch.

Review: Mere words are inadequate to describe how much I fucking love this album. Yet I also find that words are hard to come by in articulating why Tony Joe White's debut had such a profound impact on me; a clear-eyed (or clear-eared?) reviewer would no doubt highlight the flaws and half-developed ideas littered throughout the album. I, however, don't fall into the clear-eyed category; in fact, I was not a little lachrymose when I finally saw 'the Swamp Fox' himself in London last year with my friend Rachael.

(Can I just add something about the TJW live experience? White played a guitar plugged directly into an onstage amp, with precisely two pedals at his disposal - a wah-wah and a deafeningly loud overdrive, which transformed his music into proto-metal garage rock every time it was activated. His only accompaniment was a drummer, which meant the sound could sometimes feel a bit empty when TJW played lead breaks. Yet he could be absolutely mesmerising, even when he talked to the audience in his indecipherable molasses-thick drawl).

Listening to it again now, I still feel both comforted and excited by the sounds coming from my speakers. Firstly, that voice. That drawling, cool, subterranean baritone is absolutely perfect. It's not particularly well-recorded, and sometimes distorts when he fails to moderate his volume. Yet this is precisely why I love it - unlike so many modern recordings where a vocal is tracked numerous times, levelled out and compressed, this is an unadorned and honest record of one man's utterly peculiar instrument. It also helps that White possess a collection of weird vocal tics, smattering his performances with lusty grunts and non-lexical vocables.

All this is performed over what can be described as country-funk, at least on the originals that make up just over half the album. When it hits its stride, Black and White really cooks. Aforementioned opener 'Willie and Laura Mae Jones' is a fine example. Covered by Clarence Carter, Brook Benton and Dusty Springfield amongst others, it's a soulful and powerful little fable about race relations between poor blacks and whites. 'Aspen Colorado' is a quietly poignant story vignette about a young man trying to make his own way in the world, and the famous 'Polk Salad Annie' (a staple in Elvis Presley life performances) is belting rocker about an indigent girl and her 'no account' family. In all these instances, White proves to be a deft caricaturist, able to breathe life into his subjects with his wry, nuanced eye for detail.

There's a fair amount of sex on offer too. 'Whompt Out On You' portrays White as a callous lothario, and contains a drum break every bit as funky as 'Amen, My Brother' by the Winstons. 'Who's Making Love' is a soul-power cautionary tale to every dude stepping out with a side-slurp, and he even imbues the Bacharach standard 'Look of Love' with a breathy, languid eroticism. In fact, for such a good and prolific songwriter, White is a very able interpreter, showcasing his ability to inhabit a song on both 'Little Green Apples' and 'Wichita Lineman', the latter possibly just outflanking the Glen Campbell version (heresy!) in my estimation (burn him!).

Deep, seductive, slow and loose, Black and White is a quirky yet colourful slice of downhome escapism. White's idiosyncratic singing only serves to make this a more affecting collection, and Rachael can no doubt attest to my fondness for White's turn of phrase (we still text each other references to 'corn pone', mentioned in 'Willie and Laura Mae Jones' every now and again). Essential listening, y'all.

Danzig - Danzig

Provenance: For many a year, Glenn Danzig seemed an enigmatic figure, someone who lurked around the periphery of the stuff I enjoyed without ever taking centre stage. Through friends I was dimly aware that his work was worth considering; he cropped up as an influencer in magazine articles; and of course, he was once knocked out cold by the frontman of a support act, which handily for us was caught on video.

This all changed in 2010 when I saw him at Sweden Rock Festival, a performance seared into my memory. Firstly, it should be said that the erstwhile Misfit is a strange looking fellow. Squat, lantern-jawed, top-heavy and bordered by lank, black hair, his general mien is that of a gone-to-seed gothic prop-forward. His arrival on stage was comical - a middle-aged whirling mass of kung-fu kicks and karate chops, performed with such gusto that he was winded throughout the first two songs. Thereafter he recovered his composure and delivered a blistering set.

That being said, the first chord that heralded 'Mother' sent the crowd into a frenzy, to which Danzig responded by reprising his energetic Chuck Norris routine, and thus relegating the vocals to a Vic Reeves 'club singer' rendition. Gloriously funny.

Review: How did Danzig manage to mangle his vocals even further than one night in Norje? Because one of the most striking aspects of this album is that wobbly baritenor of his, like a pissed-up Thursday night Elvis impersonator, utterly unique and instantly identifiable. It really shouldn't work but somehow - somehow - it sounds totally cool.

Another aspect of the sound readily apparent to the attentive listener is the no-frills, unadorned production. Consequently, drums sound like drums, guitars sound like guitars, Danzig sounds like someone who's kicked in the mouth a few times. This is undoubtedly due to Rick Rubin's unfussy recording techniques. The odd instrument is double-tracked here and there and one can discern a slight delay on the snare, but overall Danzig is mercifully free of bells and whistles (opener 'Twist of Cain' aside, which literally does feature a bell).

Looking at both the album artwork and Glenn Danzig himself, I was expecting a skull-crushingly heavy outing bursting with detuned guitar and thrashy drums. Instead, what we're presented with here is a kind of skeletal, melodic hard rock shot through with an anthracite blackness. Lyrically, it's every bit as bad-ass as can be imagined, Satan and his sulphurous crew liberally invoked. It's also catchy as hell, especially the dark strut of 'Twist of Cain' and the Tipper Gore-baiting, face-smashing classic 'Mother'. It is, however, a touch rum to see 'The Hunter' credited solely to Glenn Danzig in the CD liner notes when it is so obviously a re-write of the Albert King song popularised by Free (which was, if memory serves correctly, written by members of Booker T and the MGs. Oh well.)

In fact, nothing on this album sucks. From start to finish, it shines blackly as a tight, conceptually coherent collection of bluesy proto-metallic hell-hymns. What does it sound like? Well, the chugging guitars (all guitars on Danzig are overdriven) and rudimentary production puts one in mind of the better New Wave of British Heavy Metal bands like Angel Witch. However, the idiosyncratic singing that dominates the album pushes it more towards someone like Mercyful Fate - the singing styles are different, but the shock one receives when first exposed to the vocals of either band is comparable.

In summation, Danzig is an top-tier album and listening to it just once will make you feel one thousand percent more diabolical. But you know what, kids? It's all fun and games saying 'hail Satan' and the like, but what's truly elite and cult is sitting down to a good book:



No wonder he's topless - the silly beggar seems to have put his library right next to the swimming pool!