Album Review: Mickey Leigh's Mutated Music - "Variants Of Vibe"

 

Mickey Leigh. You may not be familiar with the name but the guy's been a regular on the New York music scene for almost five decades now. Not least as he's the brother of the late great Joey Ramone - the pair were in bands together in the late '60s and early '70s before the Ramones were a thing and later put the band Sibling Rivalry together with him as well as serving in infamous rock writer Lester Bangs' punk band Birdland (not to be confused with the Coventry art-punks we covered on Garbage Days Revisited a few weeks back).

However, despite this long history, Variants of Vibe is Leigh's first solo album proper. I have to be honest, my hopes weren't too high for this one after hearing the lead-off single Standing In The Dark a few weeks ago as part of the Singles Bar column and not being particularly impressed by it but it's actually a bit of a false alarm and there's plenty to like here such as the melodic Trouble Man, the spiralling riff of No Fun Anymore. It's a surprisingly varied album as well with the Doors style keyboards on Go Home Ann (where Mickey sounds oddly like the late great Stiv Bators) and the Iggy style almost freeform jam of Loneliness showing that Leigh can do other stuff other than straight up power-pop.

It's not quite all plain sailing - the likes of Little Cristine, When The Truth Is On Trial and the aforementioned Standing In The Dark are a bit anonymous but overall there's far more good than bad here and Variants of Vibe is a strong effort which packs a lot more variety than you'd maybe think. With Leigh about to release his autobiography (which Stories That Never Got Told could almost be a theme song for) later this year, it looks as though busy times are ahead for the guy.

Bandcamp Link

NITE SONGS RATING: 🌔🌔🌔🌔🌔🌔🌔🌑🌑🌑 (7/10)

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