The idea of getting back up when you get knocked down is as ingrained a part of Ian Hunter\u2019s character as his hair or his sunglasses or his fetish for early Stones and Dylan.\u00a0 But not surprisingly, it took him awhile to right himself again after the 1993 death of his good friend and musical partner Mick Ronson.\u00a0 That was more than your average knock on the chin; more like a kick to the gut.<\/p>\n
When he did get back up, he — and after all, what else would you expect — did it in a totally unexpected and idiosnycratic way.\u00a0 Receiving an invitation from punk veteran and longtime admirer Casino Steel to come round and record a bit at Abbey Road, he said sure, why not, and fell in with a crew of seasoned British punk rockers and New Wavers — \u201ca right unsavoury lot — I loved every minute of it!\u201d (or so he\u2019s quoted in the liner notes).<\/p>\n
The lineup included keyboard man Steel, guitarists Honest John Plain and Darrell Bath, drummer Vom Ritchie, and on bass none other than the Sex Pistols\u2019 own Glen Matlock.\u00a0 This crew proceeded to jam to their hearts\u2019 content, building a catalog of 18 backing tracks in two weeks before decamping to Norway to record the vocals.\u00a0 The resulting disc — a band album that was nonetheless dominated both artistically and figuratively by its leading man Hunter — was released as \u201cIan Hunter\u2019s Dirty Laundry<\/i>.\u201d<\/p>\n
The 12-track album features seven Hunter lead vocals (three solo compositions and four co-writes), two each from Bath and Plain and one from Steel.\u00a0 The seven Hunter songs are a spotty bunch, but they have one thing going for them — they sound more like classic Mott The Hoople than just about anything else he\u2019s released in his entire solo career.\u00a0 And why wouldn\u2019t they be — his Dirty Laundry<\/i> crew were all big Mott fans.<\/p>\n
\u201cDancing On The Moon\u201d is pure silly fun, with the band playing it heavy and raw and clearly out to push one another and maybe even to pick Hunter up (though the too-loud-in-the-mix female backup vocalists, it must be said, are over the top).\u00a0 The revved-up British-Invasion-times-Dylan pastiche \u201cAnother Fine Mess\u201d — referencing the famous Laurel & Hardy line — is the closest Hunter comes to acknowledging his missing mate Ronson, with whom he issued YUI Orta<\/i> — referencing the Three Stooges line \u201cWhy you, I oughta\u2026\u201c \u2013 in 1989. \u00a0\u00a0\u201cScars\u201d is a solid Hunter ballad, as is the closing \u201cThe Other Man,\u201d though \u201cRed Letter Days\u201d feels rather predictable for a writer of his caliber.\u00a0 And \u201cInvisible Strings,\u201d for all its energy, is not one of IH\u2019s more impressive lyrics.<\/p>\n
So how do the others in the band fare?\u00a0 Bath\u2019s \u201cNever Trust A Blonde\u201d is a blast and one of the most Mott-like tunes here, even if they took it a chorus past where they needed to.\u00a0 The group-written \u201cMy Revolution\u201d is another concoction containing a heavy dose of Mott in the way it surges and falls back, with nice Hammond work and a big, bold, theatrical feel to it.<\/p>\n
Plain\u2019s very fun \u201cPsycho Girl\u201d takes a Buddy Holly beat in a New Wave direction, while his \u201cGood Girls\u201d swerves into bar-band territory for a sweaty homage to \u201cPeggie Sue, Maggie Mae, Sheila too\u201d and all the other classic girl-songs of the 60s.\u00a0 Bath\u2019s \u201cEveryone\u2019s A Fool\u201d is very, very, very Stonesy and sounds like fun, which is perhaps more than I can say for Steel\u2019s \u201cJunkee Love,\u201d which tries to meld a rockabilly beat with snarly George Thorogood guitars and misfires. <\/p>\n
In the end, this album racks up a lot of good songs, but no great ones.\u00a0 Usually with Hunter you get a bunch of good ones and at least a couple of just unbelievably amazing ones.\u00a0 The thing is, Hunter\u2019s best tunes really matter, and these songs don\u2019t.\u00a0 He\u2019s not digging deep, he\u2019s just blowing off steam and learning how to enjoy making music again. \u00a0I mean, \u201cDancing On The Moon\u201d — how deep is that?\u00a0 But it\u2019s not supposed to be; it\u2019s supposed to be a fun song to play, and it sounds like it probably is.\u00a0 <\/p>\n
The best thing you can say about this album is that Ian Hunter got through it.\u00a0 He wasn\u2019t done mourning Mick Ronson, but he was done with avoiding the recording studio.\u00a0 He\u2019d made another album, it wasn\u2019t half bad, and it got the wheels moving again.\u00a0 He was on a climb from here, and while Dirty Laundry<\/i> was nowhere near the heights he would once again ascend to, this bout of musical therapy was a meaningful first step onward and upward.\u00a0 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":29852,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"tags":[],"artist":[5920],"rating":[5615],"class_list":["post-41469","review","type-review","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","artist-ian-hunter","rating-rating-b"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/41469","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=41469"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/41469\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/29852"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=41469"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=41469"},{"taxonomy":"artist","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/artist?post=41469"},{"taxonomy":"rating","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rating?post=41469"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}