Imagine you’re suddenly the coolest band in the World. Imagine that all the hard work over the last 9 years has got you to a point where not only every major Rock act that matters out there wants you on their bill (Foos, Gunners, Stones) but also every rocker out there is rooting for you. It’s a good place to be right?
It’s a dangerous place to be too, there’s so much opportunity ahead that sometimes the question is do you take everything? Can you take everything? How many times do you have to talk about the praise Dave Grohl has bestowed upon you, or that time your manager called to tell you that the Stones wanted you to support them?
The Struts are at that interesting point in their career where everything seems possible and nothing seems out of reach, and if you’ve followed the band since their early days (I’m lucky enough to hail from their part of the world so was tipped off early and a few years later managed to catch them on a trip home at The Plug in Sheffield where they played a great version of ‘Get it On’ by T-Rex, but I digress) then now the world is finally starting to take notice.
I love The Struts, not only do they make some great noise but they absolutely fly live and also seem like a nice bunch of blokes. Their sound is being described as all kinds of things, but for me they always sounded like a modern take on old school Rock, plenty of elements at play but with a real focus on melody and harmony: sitting somewhere between early Queen and The Killers. There is of course far more to it than that and ‘Young and Dangerous’ is just the right album to open a few more ears.
Labels and promoters of course have long been looking for Rock’s ‘next big thing’ sadly it’s always been with a focus on their wallets. Mainstream media has always scorned Rock, found it troublesome and unworthy, and that of course leads to problems – the masses still love it. Whilst the biggest concert tours around the world are dominated by Rock acts, labels constantly throw their resources behind the lowest common denominator – what passes for Pop these days and Rap. Everyone of course is getting older though and how many Pop or Rap artists of the last ten years are going to be filling stadiums in 20 years? 2018 sees The Struts ad Greta Van Fleet as the new Queen and Led Zeppelin for the next generation… or that’s the way it’s being painted at least.
‘Young and Dangerous’ is as it happens on of the best releases of the year and for me at least knocks Greta Van Fleet’s take on Zeppelin into a cocked hat (though in truth that’s pretty great too). There’s a simple reason for this, The Struts sound fresh and new, whilst Greta still can break away fro that nostalgia/homage trap.
‘Body Talk’; you’ll all have heard by now: it’s a raucous stomper of a song made for the big stage and the bright light and a wonderful introduction. ‘Primadonna Like Me’ offers more immediacy, more rock and stomp and some nice ‘Stones meets Primal Scream’ swagger; whilst the opening salvo is rounded out by the Darkness-like ‘In Love With the Camera’ It’s at this crucial point that you realise that you’re dancing and that’s something Rock has been missing as far as I’m concerned.
The sign of a really great album though is being able to sustain that opening burst and ‘Bulletproof Baby’ slows the tempo and ups the groove, it’s a song you need to hear, taking elements of old school Glam and Classic Pop sensibilities. It’s the sort of song you’d hope that Bolan would have been creating, god bless him, if he’d still been with us.
‘Who Am I’ adds Disco to the mix, and to be honest I’m not smitten, even with the Stonsey kick, it just seems like a little safety net of cross-over filler, like dangling some ‘exotic’ bait in the river to see what else might take a bite. Sadly as a song doesn’t live up the rest of the compositions on offer here. It’s the only slight dip on the album for me though. We’re quickly back on track with the define ‘Queen’ feel to the opening of ‘People’ that does immediately grab the attention and the song blossoms into the sort of Stadium sing-along that Robbie Williams would have been proud of.
The second half of the album is all cream: ‘Fire (Part 1)’ bursts out of the speakers with a nice urgency and races like The Darkness meets vintage Mercury and co. It’s a great song, as is the laid back ‘Somebody New’ which has those trademark changes and melodies building to a huge sing-along refrain made for a crowd-backing vocal.
The piano-led ‘Tatler Magazine’ lyrically seems to be more than a nod to Mercury, and the swirling melodies that swell to the stomping ‘British Glam’ chorus melded with a Music Hall sensibility that bands like The Small Faces and the kinks just intrinsically ‘got’ – make a song to roll back the years to the days when music was fun and had that tongue-in-cheek British humour, it’s the sort of song thats sets The Struts aside and is so much fun, and man that May-esque solo is just the perfect fit!
Getting to the pointy end ‘I Do It So Well’ starts off fun and throwaway before cranking up the volume then stepping off the gas again. It’s not the song here you’ll be cranking up again and again but it is a real reminder that The Struts re than most are a band willing to go where the music takes them, and that can only be a good thing.
‘Freak Like You’ has a great Primal Screen/Stonesy swagger and a lyric that paints a picture like Reed’s ‘…Wild Side’ did all those years ago. It’s a wonderful song set to make a dead man sway in his coffin and has a nice wailing sax that just screams take me to the 70’s! Proceedings close with the sumptuous ‘Ashes (Part 2)’ and its a great way to close taking us back to a taste of Classic Rock glory, dripping in melody and cut through with guitar, and packing in all the sounds, smells and influences that make The Struts so great and so essential. It’s a wonderful journey that ends fittingly perhaps with an homage to The Who, drifting out with an echo of ‘Baba O’Riley’ so clearly that you expect those chords to come crashing in. A great way to leave us all hanging.
The remix of ‘Body Talk’ featuring Kesha (she’s dropped the ‘$’ for an ‘s’ apparently, yawn) is also included presumably for one or more of the following reasons – (a) to get the young and vacant to give the Struts a listen? (b) to sell more albums through association with a cool rapper? (c) to seem more cool to impressionable kids fed on a diet of Rap and Pop? Who knows, and quite frankly who cares (is that harsh? she might well be a lovely lady)… Let’s just hope The Struts don’t become a parody of themselves (or maybe they just want the discarded ‘$’ and this was part of the deal?). The remix by the way is far inferior to the original and adds nothing at all. And if I sound like a grumpy old rocker I make no apology, my love of music never has and never will ever have anything at all to do with being cool).
This is an album that reminds you why you love Rock and Roll so much, and it recreates that intense feeling without being overtly nostalgic or cloyingly reverential. There’s a real mix of love of life and a real passion here and we always need more albums like that.
