It’s happenstance only, but nonetheless true that I’ll be seeing Alice Cooper this week, two days before this album comes out.
Back in 2019, Coop—who always seems to tour around this time of year—had MC50 in tow. That was Wayne Kramer’s brave new world, and now this album in many ways stands as his epitaph.
He died this year at the age of 75, but not before he’d written this, the first MC5 album in 53 years.
He co-wrote 12 of the 13 songs on “Heavy Lifting” and gathered together the great and the good. Indeed, the title track might start with a bit of grandiosity, but it takes about 15 seconds for Tom Morello to announce himself.
There’s a groove, but also a rawness. “Steal from the rich, all of them sons of bitches” sings Kramer, before he suggests that “crime is gonna pay”.
This might be their first album in all those years, but honestly, “Barbarians Are At The Gate” sounds like it’s still merrily stuck in the late 60s, right down to the harmonica-fuelled freak out at the end.
And if you fancy a bit of soul-filled psych out, then “Change, No Change” has got you sorted. There’s even a falsetto vocal.
But it’s a case of “come for the falsetto, stay for the party” because William DuVall and Slash appear for “Edge Of A Switchblade” and inject some energy into an astonishing piece of rock n roll. It even mentions “kick out the Jams”.
At its heart, this is simply a quite brilliant rock n roll record. The blues of “Black Boots” (featuring Brad Brookes – an LA singer-songwriter who wrote a lot of these with Kramer) is one of the best things here, and if the flavour of Prince has seemed to be about on a few of these then “I Am The Fun (The Phoney)” and its outright funk brings it to the fore.
“25 Miles” adds a horn section for a bit of fun, and is a bit of tenderness as it looks to head back home.
I’m a Bruce Springsteen fan – hell I’ve just had to sell a kidney to afford a couple of tickets for his shows next year, and I’ve always wondered what he’d have done if he had failed his driving test, and there’s a A bit of that on “Because Of Your Car”, of course it might be about the superficiality of consumerism, but probably isn’t.
I can say with more certainty that it’s impossible not to get swept up in the energy of “Boys Who Play With Matches” or the arena rock of “Blind Eye” – on which original drummer Dennis Thompson guests (he died in May and this is his last work) and Kramer reckons “In My America everyone is free”.
Thompson is back – along with Vernon Reid of Living Colour – for the wonderful “Can’t Be Found”.
There’s time for a slice of outright funky sleaze, “Blessed Release” promises to get you wet. It must be raining…..
And that funk is ramped up still further on “Hit It Hard” as Joe Berry excels.
There’s a line on “…Switchblade” that goes, “It was all for the music, ‘cos we barely got paid, and it feels like all these years on, that love and pursuit of music is what drove them still.”
“Heavy Lifting” is more than the clichéd fitting monument; it’s a quite brilliant, yet still challenging and relevant album.
Rating: 9.5/10
REVIEW: MC5 – HEAVY LIFTING (2024)
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