Steamhammer - Wailing Again

Still Sorta Stoked

For a while a couple of years ago I began making a folder collection of 'classic' rock bands releasing new albums and material long down the road from their prime. By and large these were predictably predictable - regurgitated riffs and runs, and far too often still perpetrating the naive lyrics that seemed so hopeful at the original times of their prophesying. 

I have no idea where that collection is now. It was that collectively dreadful. One of the few albums I recall rating (though haven't returned to, so I guess that says something...) was Nazareth and their Surviving the Law.

Wailing Again is pleasingly sparky, if not steam-stoked as back in the day when I first heard them with the beautiful Passing Through on the Fill Your Head with Rock CBS sampler. This album has some of the predictable fillers too, like the blues of Twenty Four Hours - though saying that, there is some brooding soulfulness to its singing. The preceding Man in the Blue Suede Shoes is a very good guitar instrumental. And throughout this album, there are solid guitar and harmonica licks.

The album opens with its best 'new' song I Wouldn't Have Thought - simply a well-written, rhythmic puncher in an echo of Passing Through, I think - and this is followed by another good 'un, How Low Jick Jack Johnny, where a rap (all these returning ol' timers seem to feel there is this need for a contemporary touchstone) actually works.

And then there is the album's reprise of Junior's Wailing. Well, I can always listen to that, and am as I write this line.