Glasgow's longest-serving suppliers of quality garage rock have just returned from a week-long tour of France, a country that has often seems to appreciate their talents rather more than is apparent at home.
Back in the 1980s the band were signed to New Rose of Paris, and the vinyl edition of these latest 11-tracks comes via a Rennes label, with a CD to follow on Brian Guthrie's TSB of Scotland. Produced by the band and engineer Sandy Jones, and mostly written by frontman Michael Rooney, the sound of this set may be the best of their long career, with newest member Martyn Rodger contributing various shades of crucial organ colouring, as well as guitar alongside the returned Tom Rafferty, and some effective multi-layering of Rooney's vocals. Rafferty's slide playing is also an important component in a sequence that saves some of its best tracks for last and the two chord groove, In A Violent Way.
They include Keep Coming Back, which, like side one's Hit the Peaks, contains more than an hint of Led Zeppelin, a comparison I don't think I'd have made before, but which should win the band more UK fans.
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