Rum Bar 2026
Hey! L.A.!
Staking their claim on an old stomping ground, members of nocturnal royalty return to Tinseltown to reminisce and scope out the future.
It’s been a steady road of self-rediscovery for this ensemble who came back into existence in 2018 with a prospect of restoring past glories and creating another set of memories that required getting the previously unreleased album "Sound City" out of collective’s system and taking to the stage again. The results of such an exorcism was 2024’s “Starstruck” – the veterans’ first studio offering after a 47-years hiatus – which proved to be not a one-off endeavor but a precursor to a fresh creative streak, as “Hey! L.A.!” suggests in style. Marrying the grit of the group’s initial intent to the glam of their eponymous platter from the ’70s, the flow of new pieces on display is uneven yet also compelling, as the musicians’ energetic performances defy their age.
The band tackle the question of staying alive in the deliciously rambunctious “I Survived 27” that throws its anthemic refrain, led by original singer Scott Phares, in the face of entropy, and insist they don’t need repairing in “I’m Not Broken” that applies heavy riffs to the “All The Young Dudes”-esque catchiness. Perhaps, recording “King Of The Night Time World” again and placing it as this album’s finale in order to link the ensemble’s present to their beginning seemed like a good idea, but repeatedly ramming home the point of THE HOLLYWOOD STARS enriching the KISS catalogue is an unnecessary move, even when the quintet need to demonstrate their today’s strengths.
Fortunately, the same can’t be said about the recutting of a couple of tracks from 2023’s digital-only EP “Still Around” for a physical release. Now the groovy “Will The Lights Go On Again?” and “The Bottom” feel more substantial, frequencies-wise, the former co-penned with the classic line-up’s principal songwriter Mark Anthony, who passed away in 2002, and propelled by the mainstay drummer Terry Rae’s relentless beat, and the latter fittingly laden with Michael Rummans’s fleshy, and flashy, bass. As guitarists Jeff Jourard and George Keller spin their frenetic rock ‘n’ roll licks around the titular opener’s punky drive, the listener may assume the group are averse to overt sentimentality, despite the many references to the days of yore in their lyrics, yet the cello-abetted “This Moment” doesn’t shy away from capturing them in the carpe-diem acoustic reflectiveness.
With the boisterous “So Long And So Far Away” adding country abandon to the platter’s palette, and punchy “Birth Lights” reaching for a rootsy swagger too, there’s hardly a dull moment here, but it’s “When I Find You” that projects the most gorgeous, albeit gloomy, blues tinge here to properly wrap up the album before the aforementioned oldie kicks in. Hail the kings, indeed.
****1/3
