REVIEW: Ian Hunter defies trends, leans on famous friends to make another classic rocker
Ian Hunter has been defiant for many years now, steadfastly resisting most trends in modern rock and pop music to make albums that may well have been big sellers in the 1970s and 1980s, and would be now if the world was a fair place.
Defiance Part 1
Ian Hunter
Sun Records, April 21
8/10
Get the album on Amazon Music.
And for that, Mr. Hunter, we thank you.
He’s still at it, and for his latest effort, a dizzying lineup of big-name collaborators – most of them Hunter’s contemporaries or first-generation disciples – pitched in on Defiance Part 1, Hunter’s 16th solo studio album, a work borne of the COVID-19 lockdown.
Among the players on these 10 songs are the late Jeff Beck and Taylor Hawkins, Ringo Starr, former Heartbreaker Mike Campbell, ZZ Top’s Billy F. Gibbons, Todd Rundgren, Slash, Metallica’s Robert Trujillo and all three instrumentalists from Stone Temple Pilots.
So when guitarist Dean DeLeo, bassist Robert DeLeo and drummer Eric Kretz appear on “Pavlov’s Dog,” it’s no coincidence that this piledriver sounds like Stone Temple Pilots fronted by Hunter and his piano. This is Hunter’s hardest-rocking song in years. Not far behind is “Defiance,” with Slash’s thick, clear lead lines on top of Hunter’s crushing rhythm bed. “Too many winters of discontent/ Took no advice, gave no consent,” he sings.
Hunter’s always been a literate curmudgeon, but one with both a pop sensibility and a sentimental streak. On new song “Bed of Roses,” he opines about a long-gone music venue where the “lamps swayed side to side” and where he was proud to have been one of the musical “thorns.” It’s a fond look back to his younger self, in much the same vein as his song “Saturday Gigs,” recorded in the waning days of Mott the Hoople in the mid-1970s.
Ringo’s drumming and Campbell’s slide guitar kick “Bed of Roses” off to a fast start. These and the other famous guest stars give Hunter room to be himself, but often still put their own mark on the songs, as well. Case in point: “Don’t Tread on Me,” on which the guitars and backing vocals are easily identifiable as Rundgren’s. It’s a song that could have been a radio hit in the 1980s ….perhaps with a younger voice up front.
There’s no getting around the fact that Hunter’s voice isn’t what it was in the 1970s, when he threw his Midlands accent into songs about the Young Dudes and leaving his six-string razor on a train to Oreole. Hunter is 83, and his singing shows it. But that roughness is also a badge of honor for having remained so true to the spirit of rock and roll for so long.
And for every time the listener wishes that voice could still cut through the loud guitars like it could on 1975’s “Once Bitten Twice Shy,” in several other spots the gruffness adds character. That aspect comes through most clearly in “No Hard Feelings,” in which Hunter recounts someone – a harsh father, perhaps – saying “I’m going to make a man out of you if it’s the last thing I ever do.” A menacing solo and outro by Jeff Beck adds punch. And Hawkins is all over “Angel,” contributing drums, guitar, electric piano and background vocals.
Multi-instrumentalist Andy York, a longtime member of Hunter’s Rant Band, turns up on most tracks here, too, in various guises.
It’s good to know that true believer Hunter is still putting out such quality records, and that so many accomplished colleagues were willing to use some COVID-enforced time off to be part of it.
Follow journalist Sam Richards at Twitter.com/samrichardsWC.