Heavy Lifting by MC5 review: 'classic garage rock action'

Influential Detroit band MC5 have released their first album in 53 years and it’s a cracker, writes Fiona Shepherd

MC5: Heavy Lifting (earMUSIC) ****

Rag’N’Bone Man: What Do You Believe In? (Columbia) ***

Snowgoose: Descendant (Violette Records) ****

Wayne Kramer of MC5 PIC: Jim Newberry.

Ian Donaldson: Dreams From Tenement Land (The LNFG Cartel) ***

The Motor City 5, better known as MC5, were one of the most influential rock bands of all time, forming a riotous Detroit tag team with The Stooges in the late Sixties. Where Iggy Pop’s lot were proto-punk nihilists, the MC5 preached ramalama revolution, rallying the troops with the war cry “kick out the jams” before running into the ground by 1973.

Spearheaded and fronted by founder member Wayne Kramer, co-written with Oakland singer/songwriter Brad Brooks and produced by legendary rock producer Bob Ezrin, Heavy Lifting is their first album in 53 years – and their final hurrah. Kramer passed away earlier this year, followed months later by the last surviving original member, drummer Dennis “Machine Gun” Thompson, who guests on two tracks.

Among the other artists queuing up to inhale some classic garage rock action are Slash, Don Was and Rage Against the Machine’s Tom Morello, members of latterday rock gods Living Colour, Alice in Chains and Rise Against as well as many respected session players, creating a somewhat patchwork tribute with some joyous moments.

Rag'n'Bone Man PIC: Fiona Garden

The gutsy bruiser of a title track and trademark tight-but-loose Barbarians at the Gate contrast with the slinky soulful blues rock of Change, No Change and sweaty funk blues of Blessed Release. First single Boys Who Play With Matches has a bit of Alice Cooper jeopardy, while Slash revels in the Stonesy freedom and Funkadelic references of The Edge of the Switchblade.

There is humour in the gonzo declamation of I Am The Fun and Because of Your Car but the highlights are Blind Eye and Can’t Be Found, two unexpected diversions into FM power rock featuring Thompson on drums. For a few brief moments, the band is (sort of) back together and a day after the album is released, the MC5 will be belatedly inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

In 2016, Rag’N’Bone Man left behind moody trip-hop to break through with the streamlined blues pop of Human. Now his third album opens with the sweet retro soul strains of The Right Way as the singer born Rory Graham showcases his range from falsetto high to bassy low. The musical ups and downs continue through What Do You Believe In? with the light urban soul of Hideaway on the plus side and the strained sentiments of overcooked ballad Iron and the mawkish Hope You Felt Loved In the End mired in cliché.

Also on their third album outing are Snowgoose, the sublime collaboration between Soup Dragons/BMX Bandits guitarist Jim McCulloch and Anna Sheard, an entrancing vocalist who combines California breeziness with English psych folk qualities. Supported by guest players including Teenage Fanclub guitarist Raymond McGinley and Belle & Sebastian keyboard player Chris Geddes, they layer on forlorn trumpet and synth arpeggios to Down the Line, dapple the Laurel Canyon amble of Sorrow with electric piano and infuse Bewildered Dance with the soulful keen of pedal steel to create a vibe (no other word will do) that is both mellow and heady.

Snowgoose

On the sleeve of his latest solo album, former H2O frontman Ian Donaldson is captured in his teen pomp wearing Bay City Rollers-style duds. As its title suggests, Dreams From Tenement Land is unabashed nostalgia. He gets dewy-eyed about punk on Dreams Can Change the World, invokes glam rock on Mirror Ball, adds some Simple Minds guitar inflections to the silky Eighties pop/rock of All I Have Is Forever and ends on a high with the New Romantic torch song The Alchemy of Us and the proggy climax of Rachel Tyrell.

CLASSICAL

Voices for solo piano Delphian ****

It seems proportionate that the lengthiest exposure on German-born pianist Hanni Lang’s new solo album Voices should go to the 19th/20th century composer and women’s suffragette Dame Ethel Smyth. In Smyth’s early Sonata No 2, written during her 1870s studentship in Leipzig, the influences of Beethoven and Brahms seem merely a platform from which her own expression tentatively takes flight. Lang’s thoughtfully robust performance, as in the more Schumann-like Variations in D flat, roots out that emotional flamboyance which was to inform Smyth’s own maturer style. These play like a call-to-arms to the rest of the female composers featured: Errollyn Wallen’s I wouldn’t Normally Say, a hip-swinging miniature; Sally Beamish’s crystalline insomnia-inspired, Nocturne; Chinese composer Chen Li’s hefty multi-faceted Variations on ‘Awariguli’; and the exciting palette of Eleanor Alberga’s virtuosic Cwicseolfor. Ken Walton

JAZZ

4 in 1: Monkin’ Around (Ubuntu Music) ****

Monkin’ Around is a potent new trio of saxophonist Dave O’Higgins, double-bassist Luke Fowler and drummer Billy Pod bringing non-chordal re-imagining to the music of the blessed Thelonious. They do so with evident relish, with guests pianist Sean Fyfe and trumpeter Martin Shaw enabling them to morph as required into quartet or quintet for these joyous interpretations.

They open with a punchy trio account of the irrepressible Well You Needn’t; threesome again for the languid pacing of Pannonica, O’Higgins’s sax singing and whispering over stealthy bass, while the saxophonist leads a rollicking, keyboardless version of Epistrophy.

Evidence delivers with athletic gusto, pianist and bassist in particular launching out of its snappy hook, sax and trumpet fanfare together in the carnivalesque San Francisco Holiday, while the no nonsense swing of Brake’s Sake sees the full quintet in action. Jim Gilchrist