The difference between a decent Ian Hunter album and an excellent Ian Hunter album has almost always been the same \u2013 while he\u2019s a remarkable songwriter and performer, the quality of his output has often corresponded directly with the quality of his collaborators.\u00a0 In particular, Hunter\u2019s best solo work has usually featured a musical foil of one sort or another whose function is to push and prod Hunter into delivering the great work he\u2019s capable of.<\/p>\n
From 1975 to 1993, more often than not that foil was former David Bowie guitarist and longtime pal Mick Ronson.\u00a0 Ah, but All Of The Good Ones Are Taken<\/i> features Ronson on exactly one cut.\u00a0 It\u2019s tempting to end this review right there — the evidence is that compelling — but that would be cheating.\u00a0 The thing is, every single one of Hunter\u2019s album-length collaborations with Ronson has been superb, without exception.\u00a0 Think about how remarkable that is — I mean, even Jagger and Richards and Taupin and John have had their lapses in quality; not Hunter and Ronson, not once.\u00a0 Musically, those two completed each other.<\/p>\n
Thus, on relatively Ronson-less albums like AOTGWAT<\/i>, a lot rides on the producer and players, and Hunter unfortunately does not have a sympathetic producer here.\u00a0 To the contrary, Max Norman (Ozzy Osbourne, Y&T) tarts the album up with a series of overcooked \u201980s production touches — too many synthesizers, too much echo on the vocals and altogether too much slickness for a veteran barroom basher like Hunter.<\/p>\n
The title track at least offers you a little sax appeal courtesy of guest Clarence Clemons, but neither it nor the following \u201cEvery Step Of The Way\u201d ever really ignite like they might with tighter, rawer arrangements, and from there things deteriorate rapidly.\u00a0 \u201cFun\u201d and \u201cSpeechless\u201d show a definite new wave influence, with bouncy Blondie-ish beats and chirpy synths and a bunch of other \u201980s twaddle that makes the hair on the back of my neck stand up.\u00a0 Honestly, this stuff sounds more like a parody of Ian Hunter than the real thing.<\/p>\n
Having said that, the one thing Hunter can always be counted on for is a good rant.\u00a0 \u201cDeath \u2018N\u2019 Glory Boys\u201d is one of his better ones, and Ronson\u2019s epic lead guitar rises above the poor production for the most part\u2026 it\u2019s just hard to escape the fact that the drums sound less like actual drums than like someone hitting a large piece of fiberglass with a sledgehammer inside an echo chamber.\u00a0 Surprisingly, the best song here is perhaps not the one with Ronson on it, but the one after that.\u00a0 \u201cThat Girl Is Rock and Roll\u201d feels like a particularly tasty leftover from Hunter\u2019s work with Clash guitarist Mick Jones on 1981\u2019s Short Back ‘n’ Sides<\/i>, with a satisfying edge and sass, if you can just manage to ignore the Culture Club synths on the verses.<\/p>\n
Just when you wonder if the album might be salvageable, though, along comes \u201cSomethin\u2019s Goin\u2019 On.\u201d \u00a0You know you\u2019re stuck in a classically overproduced \u201980s tune when you can no longer distinguish whether the noise that is the song\u2019s melodic hook is being made by a guitar or a synthesizer; it sounds so processed-and-programmed it could be almost anything at all.\u00a0 The sinking feeling continues as \u201cCaptain Void \u2018n\u2019 The Video Jets\u201d earns my vote for the worst Hunter song ever, an apparent attempt at parodying empty-headed electro-pop that is virtually unlistenable. \u00a0(This is one of those cuts that one suspects, if you asked Hunter about it in an interview today, he might walk out.\u00a0 If you listen hard enough, somewhere deep in the mix you can hear Mick Ronson\u2019s voice saying \u201cIan!\u00a0 Listen up, mate!\u00a0 What the bloody \u2019ell\u2019s going on with this track?\u00a0 If it\u2019s supposed to be a joke, why isn\u2019t it funny?\u201d)<\/p>\n
For the sake of 180-degree contrast, \u201cSeeing Double\u201d starts off with a sweet Clarence Clemons sax solo and blossoms into a pleasant ballad, marred only by too much echo and over-the-top background vocals.\u00a0 The album closes with an alternate version of the title track, which suffers much the same fate as the original, i.e. it\u2019s a passable, rather wistful pop song, but the production is horrific.\u00a0 The CD bonus track \u201cTraitor\u201d tries to be rant-worthy, but — again — the wheels-o-cheese \u201980s production clutters it up irredeemably.<\/p>\n
The best thing I could say about All Of The Good Ones Are Taken<\/i> is that it has a handful of songs strong enough to quite nearly overcome the producer\u2019s butchery of them, and a greater number that unfortunately aren\u2019t of that caliber.\u00a0 The problem is context as much as anything; it\u2019s one of the most unspectacular albums in the catalog of a man who\u2019s made quite a number of spectacular ones.\u00a0 Which certainly helps explain how six years passed before Hunter issued his next album, and why when he did return, it was in full partnership with his old mate Mick Ronson.\u00a0 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":24664,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"artist":[5920],"rating":[11205],"class_list":["post-41467","review","type-review","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","artist-ian-hunter","rating-rating-d-plus"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/41467","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/review"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=41467"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/41467\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/24664"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=41467"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"artist","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/artist?post=41467"},{"taxonomy":"rating","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rating?post=41467"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}