Angel Air 2013
Rockin’ With The Devil
Hoist the colors for some nice swashbuckling from the former Pirate and his restless crew.
One may presume THE PIRATES would lower they flag and land for good after Mick Green checked out into eternity, but no: just like the guitarist took over from Johnny Kidd, the latter day band’s bassist BJ Anders is keeping the colors flying with THE BUCCANEERS. Handling the six-string now and taking fellow Swedes on board, he follows the recent reissue of "Land Of The Blind" with his own group’s debut that’s equally cocksure cool and full of humor many other rockabilly twisters lack. It takes real balls to feminize old chestnut into “Louise Louise” or completely lose the acclaimed Scandinavian reserve to the heat of “Argentine A-Go-Go” that sets the twangy tone for the rest of the record.
It dims it only for the sunset, mandolin-spiced ballad “The Getaway” and the organ-helped, twin-axe wielding “Road To Paradise”, while “Idiot Creed” ramps up the punky groove with Jacob Hjarne’s bass shaking the bottom end and the “I Feel Fine” quote adding up to the playful mood. Spiky as well, “These Glorious Times” rolls deliberately sweet for its percussive grit anyway, yet there’s sharp intensity to the acoustically textured jewel “Wolf Girl” to compensate for it. And when the romantic “When The Lights Are Out” fades out of sight, one wishes there’d be more than a dozen cuts on the band’s Jolly Roger of a debut.
****1/2
