Album Review: The Skids - "Songs From A Haunted Ballroom"

 

Playing cleverly on the title of their 1978 debut Hymns From A Haunted Ballroom, this new album from the Skids sees them going down the covers route. The band's first album since reforming, 2018's Burning Cities, was a solid comeback effort and with an interesting selection of songs in here, I was certainly intrigued when this one landed on my review desk.

As you'd maybe expect if you're familiar with the Skids' back catalogue, a lot of the selections here lean towards the artier end of punk and glam with a storming rendition of Ultravox's Young Savage working well as the lead-off track while their take on Magazine's The Light Pours Out Of Me is given the necessary reverence and enough of the band's own stamp to make sure it works. The group's take on David Essex's Rock On also shows off the band's post-punk credentials as they capture the haunting minimalist nature of the original to good effect adding some sinister synths to enhance things just the right amount. At the other end of the scale, their version of Hello’s New York Groove shows off their poppier side to good effect.

For the most part, the band do a good job here - Richard Jobson is on good form on vocals while behind him, the band keep things tight and lean as these songs demand. Their covers of the Clash's Complete Control and the Pistols' Submission could have been well south of terrible if they'd approached them wrong but they do a good job while Bruce Watson's deft guitar work on the group's version of Nick Lowe's Heart Of The City gives the song a bit of a more modern facelift to good effect. As with any covers album, there is the odd miss where the band just don't really add anything of note to the original - their takes on the Adverts' Gary Gilmore's Eyes and the Stooges' I Wanna Be Your Dog (which, to be fair, isn't exactly a song that there haven't been a lot of covers of already!) aren't bad songs just a bit unremarkable while their attempt to do a rocked-up version of Mott the Hoople's Violence just doesn't quite work as well as it should.

The group also include a couple of re-recordings of two of their best known songs to round things off in The Saints Are Coming and Into The Valley and they turn in solid 21st century versions of both songs which is all you can ask for.

I'll be honest, I always regard any covers album as something that's more for die hard fans of the band doing the covering than anyone else but to the Skids' credit, they at least sound like they're having good fun here and the enthusiasm means you can't help but enjoy Songs From A Haunted Ballroom. Not an essential album but, as they say in Dunfermline, no' bad at all. 

Bandcamp Link

NITE SONGS RATING: 🌔🌔🌔🌔🌔🌔🌔🌑🌑🌑 (7/10)

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