62 Jahre Musik, Liebe, Verluste, lange Sommertage und längere, dunkle Nächte werden von »unserem größten lebenden Songwriter«, Michael Head und The Red Elastic Band lebendig in Erinnerung gerufen, wenn er auf seinem neuen Album Loophole flackernde Szenen aus seinem Leben spielt.
12 stimmungsvolle und autobiografische Songs werden durch das geschriebene Wort begleitet.
“I’m just loving the future” Mick Head announced in MOJO 365, a singer-songwriter finally parlaying 40 years of cultish and critical acclaim into something akin to success. Nevertheless, this fairly swift follow-up to 2022’s Dear Scott more often negotiates with the past, as Head memorialises formative Liverpool events and Shack-era road tales, revisiting old musical touchstones as he goes. Love, of course, remain sine qua non (Ciao Ciao Bambino, the especially superb Ricochet), but there’s a bossa-adjacent throwback to his ’80s band The Pale Fountains too (You Smiled At Me), and a new curio in You’re A Long Time Dead that’s roughly Rhapsody In Blue, Dixieland-style.
It all makes for a scrappier and less cohesive set than Dear Scott, but possibly a more characterful one, with even better songs. Start with Merry Go Round, elegiac psych-baroque co-written by Shack alumnus Pete Wilkinson that impressionistically mentions Mussolini, Thatcher and, perhaps more positively, Echo & The Bunnymen’s Will Sergeant.
(www.mojo4music.com)