For years it had been rumored that Femme Fatale’s unreleased second album ‘Lady in Waiting’ would soon see a release. Years after those first rumors here we have it – but not released as originally titled – now rechristened ‘One More For the Road’.
Opener ‘Don’t Mean Nothing’ is a decent enough hard rocker that sounds like it was conceived in barroom, a little rough around the edges and with Lorraine’s sleazier growl to the fore it kicks off the album nicely, if not a little dirtier than you remember their slick debut offering.
‘Lady in Waiting’ the track itself is a moody rocker and has a great sound, again bluesier and dirtier than you might imagine with the band sounding more like Sashed Gladys than Femme Fatale and that is what I most like about this album it’s not the pop-centred rock you might expect it goes down to the bad end of town and stays there.
Of the early tracks the spirited ‘I know’ and the title track ’One More For the Road’ work best for me and are surprisingly sleazy but the ballad ‘Buried Alive’ is nice and breezy and is a real grower and one of my favourites at the moment.
The album has far more great moments though – the building singalong that is ‘The Alley’ sounds like it would have been a great live number; ‘Til it’s Shot’ is a nice lively sleazy rock-out; and closer ‘Lost generation’ a remainder of that might have been had MCA really cared about rock and stuck with the band.
There are moments of filler though ‘Fallen Child’ sort of goes through the motions and sounds like a good idea but unresolved; ‘Sacred Bible’ doesn’t really go anywhere and it’s the same with ‘Ain’t Nothing Better’ and ‘I’m Back’ which sound cool but kinda unfinished and I guess that’s where the songs would either have been reworked or dropped for release. You have to bear in mind that the 14 tracks here would probably been down to ten for a ‘back in the day’ release so it’s cool to get them all here.
I’ve mixed feelings over the over ‘Another Piece of My Heart’, in the context of the album it fits the sound and mood beautifully but the song (made popular by Janis Joplin but originally recorded by Erma Franklin) gets covered a lot and not often well, still this is miles ahead of the recent Steven Tyler version.
The album closes with two tracks that sort of sum up the album, there’s the fiery yet unresolved ‘Stiffed’ which may well not have made the cut on a shorter release and the wonderful ‘Lost Generation’ which shows you just how good these guys could have been.
In short this is a decent Hard Rock album perfect for the day it was recorded and still strong enough to hold up all these years later. Sonically I actually prefer its grit than the sheen of the debut. What it doesn’t have however is that killer tune like ‘Waiting for the Big One’ that could have seen it released back in the day and then who knows? Femme Fatale might have been more than just a footnote in Hard Rock history.
