Once upon a time, Ian Hunter was the very model of the young British rocker, banging his way through one forgotten band after another until a group called Silence invited him to join, around the same time they changed their name to the more memorable (and well-remembered) Mott The Hoople. Nearly 50 years later, Hunter is the very model\u2014nearly the only model\u2014of the British rocker past 75, in the midst of a late-career renaissance for the ages.<\/p>\n
Hunter moved on from the star-crossed but well-loved Mott into a solo career whose early highs\u2014his 1975 self-titled debut and 1979\u2019s terrific You\u2019re Never Alone With A Schizophrenic<\/i>\u2014lapsed into a spottier mid-section through the \u201980s and \u201990s. But the once-young lion came roaring back with 2001\u2019s fierce and fantastic Rant<\/i>, and hasn\u2019t missed a beat since, most recently delivering three of the best albums of his long career in Shrunken Heads<\/i> (2007), Man Overboard<\/i> (2009) and When I\u2019m President<\/i> (2012).<\/p>\n
Fingers Crossed<\/i> continues that notable run with all the brio, wit, and road-worn wisdom his loyal following has come to expect. Opening up with a dirty, chugging riff and an ascending battle cry of \u201cYeah yeah yeah yeah!\u201d opener \u201cThat\u2019s When The Trouble Starts\u201d is a storming rocker that isn\u2019t three lines old before the 77-year-old Hunter swerves from his pleasantly road-worn voice to a spot-on falsetto, as if to prove it\u2019s still there anytime he needs it.<\/p>\n
This big-boned barroom anthem wisely doesn\u2019t overstay its welcome before giving way to the brilliant \u201cDandy,\u201d Hunter\u2019s affectionate tribute to his friend David Bowie, the man who singlehandedly rescued Mott (and Hunter) from obscurity by giving them their biggest and most enduring hit in \u201cAll The Young Dudes.\u201d It\u2019s a snappy, sassy tune, of course, full of great lines like \u201cSomething\u2019s happening, Mr. Jones \/ My brother says you\u2019re better than the Beatles or the Stones\u201d and \u201cDandy \u2013 the world was black \u2018n\u2019 white \/ You showed us what it\u2019s like \/ To live inside a rainbow.\u201d The bridge seems to borrow a continental flavor from Leonard Cohen, a wordless lament, before eventually moving into this final chorus: \u201cDandy \u2013 the keeper of the flame \/ We won\u2019t see your like again \/ No, Dandy was a one-off \/ Dandy \u2013 look what you\u2019ve become \/ I guess I owe you one \/ So thanks for the memories.\u201d To work, to be neither perfunctory nor maudlin, a tribute like this has to strike just the right tone; this one is perfect in every way.<\/p>\n
It feels natural after this heartfelt elegy to transition right into another song about memories. Inspired by a 2014 visit to one of the birthplaces of rock and roll, Sam Phillips\u2019 legendary Sun Studios in Memphis, the suitably foreboding \u201cGhosts\u201d finds Hunter deep in a dream of rock and roll heaven (and sounding more than ever like his idol Dylan): \u201cI\u2019m standing in a room full of ghosts, turntable spinning around \/ I\u2019m standing in a room of ghosts, why don\u2019t ya put the needle down.\u201d In the end, the song becomes another fond thank-you to the influences who shaped Hunter\u2019s life and career: \u201cWhen every light went out on me \u2013\u00a0 when every star was crossed \/ You scratched the surface of my soul \u2018n\u2019 told me who I was\u2026 I\u2019m standin\u2019 in a roomful of ghosts \u2013 you showed me what to do \/ I\u2019m standin\u2019 in a roomful of ghosts \u2013 \u2018n\u2019 I\u2019m still thanking you.\u201d \u00a0<\/p>\n
Up next, the title track presents the latest model of the serious, soaring, sincere piano ballads that Hunter has mastered over the years, kicked off by this tremendous opening line: \u201cI was pressed into service through no fault of my own \/ I was dragged from the gutter by nefarious rogues.\u201d The allegory becomes one of looming death (\u201cOn the steps of the scaffold\u201d) leading up to a moment of reckoning: \u201cI make my confession with my fingers crossed.\u201d And that\u2019s really the heart of this album\u2019s lyrical concerns: has Hunter\u2019s been a life well spent? As obvious as the answer seems, it\u2019s a question worth asking.<\/p>\n
Because he\u2019s Ian Hunter, he follows the most serious and somber, almost weepy moment on this album with a pair of playful, upbeat numbers in the form of \u201cWhite House\u201d\u2014a fun peek at his apparently quite content domestic life\u2014and \u201cBow Street Runners,\u201d a rollicking historical tale about Old London vigilantes. The tempo then moves back to the middle for an appropriately slumbering ode to \u201cMorpheus\u201d that Mark Bosch appends with a long, gorgeous guitar solo, channeling the ghost of Hunter\u2019s former foil Mick Ronson for the last few powerful bars.<\/p>\n
On the home stretch, \u201cStranded In Reality\u201d offers an enjoyably cranky rant about modern life (\u201cStranded in reality \u2013 it\u2019s the age of the deluded \/ Everybody\u2019s got a brain \u2013 but the batteries ain\u2019t included\u201d), while the melancholy advice-to-a-friend (or is it himself?) number \u201cYou Can\u2019t Live In The Past\u201d rides a slinky rhythm with a hint of reggae. The jaunty autobiographical closer \u201cLong Time\u201d retells the legend of Mott The Hoople one more time: \u201cBe careful what you wish for \u2013 dreams can come true \/ I was used to failure \u2013 this was somethin\u2019 new \/ We tripped the light fandango til\u2019\u00a0 we ran out of steam \/ And then one by one we fell off the end of a dream.\u201d In the end, he offers this wise summation of his\u2014and really, anyone\u2019s\u2014life: \u201cYou take a chance on destiny \u2013 you never know what you\u2019ll find \/ Fortune and misfortune are forever entwined.\u201d<\/p>\n
The songs themselves are magnificent, wise and witty and delivered with the casual, confident panache of a veteran performer, but they could still have faltered if not for the support of one of the finest bands going. The Rant Band, the core of which dates back to Hunter\u2019s 2001 album Rant<\/i>, is a tight, ferociously good unit in the E Street vein that delivers spot-on support on every tune. Guitarists James Mastro and Mark Bosch, bassist Paul Page, drummer Steve Holley, keyboardist Dennis Dibrizzi (replacing Andy Burton; they both play on much of this album) and co-producer\/musical director\/guitarist Andy York are uniformly superb, and Hunter deploys his forces like the seasoned field marshal that he is, arranging every song for maximum power and impact.<\/p>\n
Fingers Crossed<\/i> is rather inevitably tinged with nostalgia and a touch of melancholy as Hunter looks back on his life and takes stock of it, but it\u2019s miles from any sort of farewell. It\u2019s simply Hunter doing what he\u2019s always done\u2014turning the material he has at hand into a set of sharp, captivating, emotionally rich songs that take you on a journey. We\u2019re ready for more anytime you are, sir.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":32829,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"artist":[8920],"rating":[5646],"class_list":["post-44601","review","type-review","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","artist-ian-hunter-the-rant-band","rating-rating-a"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/44601","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=44601"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/44601\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/32829"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=44601"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"artist","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/artist?post=44601"},{"taxonomy":"rating","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rating?post=44601"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}