Career 2013
The RADIO BIRDMAN founder tunes into the home nest station and cuts it hard.
You could have guessed this artist’s origin even if he didn’t name his fourth solo album the way he did – by the way he, a product of Michigan, reproduces the authentic, if organ-oiled, sound of THE STOOGES. And that’s the spirit as well, the one of hopelessness. The record’s a lament for Tek’s hometown, a friend that Deniz sings about in “Falling”, crumbling to pieces.
The overall mood is brilliantly summarized by the Sisyphus metaphor in the tight “Fate, Not Amenable To Change”, which shrouds the “no fun” tack into an orchestral shawl and shoots it through with the sleaze, STONES-esque guitars to contrast the atmosphere of “Ghost Town” that insists, “We’re already dead, nothing can kill is anymore”. Brave face is pulled more often than not during these 35 hard-hitting minutes, even though a tear lurks behind the bitter smile of “Can Of Soup” and solemn acoustics of the “Growing Dim” blues.
The reckless anger pouring out of “Twilight Of The Modern Age” may push it to the metal limit, but there’s immense humanness in its deceptive alienation and abandon. More so, it lifts the weight piled in the fierce, yet loose, “Pine Box”, a stark depiction of dead factories thrown into sharp relief with a relentless drumming courtesy of Ric Parnell, a veteran of ATOMIC ROOSTER wars. The band switch into upbeat mode for a much lighter wail of “Perfect World”, its good rockin’ reprised in the harmonica-smashed “I’m Alright” for optimism to prevail. It’s not search and destroy at the end of the day, it’s seek and be standing tall.
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