Roll up, roll up for the maddest circus in town. There’s a glorious sax riff to start “Nighthawks Acrobats”. Think E Street Band if Bruce wrote songs that namechecked Lesley Judd. The solo is magnificent too. By the end of it, frankly, you will – if you are anything like me – want to buy a shitty van and join a rock ’n’ roll band.
And this isn’t a fluke, either. No siree. “Johnny Domino” underlines the Springsteen thing again, but only if Ian Hunter fronted his band. For clarity, this makes it really, really good.
“I try my best to be less awkward socially,” sings Johnny Barracuda (definitely his real name) at the start of “Should Know Better”, and Tyla looks on enviously. “Best I should let her go,” it concludes. But he won’t. You know he won’t.
What we do know is Johnny is a rock ’n’ roll lifer. He and bass man Bomber were in Montereez, who opened for GnR twice. I don’t know what they’ve done since. Don’t like to ask.
The only other thing you need to know is this is their third record – oh, and they’re going to tour with The Quireboys, and the legend that is Spike turns up on “A Stones Throw”, the type of Faces ballad he’s been knocking out for years.
“Elaine” is so British it might as well come with a side of bacon, egg and sausage. “We are different, she and me, she went to university” is phenomenal.
“Suited And Booted” (“I smell just like me dad” is the line of choice here) has riffs, a confident swagger, and is presumably where they get their sartorial elegance from.
Mott The Hoople should have written “Rain On Us” – they might have, I can’t be arsed to check – as the Dukes get lugubrious, while the solo from Si Leach promises better times.
“In Love With Myself” looks back on younger days. Simpler, maybe. Anyone who grew up in the 80s will probably recognise themselves in it.
Swerve’s keys are a window to a wonderful world on the brilliant bar-room sway of “Sunday Magazines”, and I’ll bet they were the type of magazines that had adverts for 0898 numbers in the back (never rang them…).
That ends the record, save for the fact there’s a single edit of “A Stones Throw”, which means Spike is back, and that’s just fine. Because in 1990 I’d never heard Mott The Hoople, The Faces or any of them, but I had The Quireboys.
They were rock ’n’ roll to me. They are rock ’n’ roll still. But Soho Dukes are surely the sleazy cousins doing the drinking on behalf of the other mob (okay maybe not Spike’s share). There’s a very real chance that “Nighthawks, Acrobats, And Everything Under The Moon” is the best pure rock ’n’ roll record by a British band this year.
Rating: 9.5/10
