Album Review: Andy McCoy - "Jukebox Junkie"

 

Oh-ho, what have we here then? It's been a while since I heard any new material from Finland's very own rock 'n' roll sheriff but with new offerings from Nasty Suicide/Stenfors, Sami Yaffa and of course Michael Monroe landing on our review desk in the last 12 months, the prospect of some new material from Andy McCoy, even if it's just a covers album, is always something that's gonna put a smile back on my face.

The key to a good covers album on the evidence of some of the ones we've reviewed in the last few years here at Nite Songs is either a) pick a suitably eclectic selection of songs that not everyone listening is likely to be familiar with (see the Hellacopters' Head Off or the Wildhearts' Stop Us If You've Heard This One Before for examples) or just simply kick loose and sound like you're having an absolute blast doing it (see the Skids' Songs From A Haunted Ballroom last year). And I'm happy to report that Jukebox Junkie delivers on both of these fronts - McCoy is clearly a man with an eclectic taste in music and this album dashes from reggae (an energetic run through Toots & The Maytals' 54-46 Is My Number and a dubbed-up version of Phil Lynott's Solo In Soho) through country (Miss Tennessee and a gentle take on Don Williams' Shot Full Of Love packing a killer McCoy trademark solo), rockabilly (Wanda Jackson's Funnel Of Love) new wave (a cover of Squeeze's Take Me I'm Yours which works way better than it has any right to plus Bowie/Iggy's China Girl and proof that the Divinyls were so much more than that just one song with a cover of Back To The Wall), punk (a suitably apocalyptic sounding version of the UK Subs' Countdown) and classic rock 'n' roll (well executed takes on Ronnie Wood's reefer ode I Can Feel The Fire and Chris Spedding's evergreen Motorbikin'). Throughout, the sheriff and his posse for this particular record sound as if they're having an absolute blast - the only slight miss is their cover of the Climax Blues Band's Couldn't Get It Right which is okay but suffers a bit by not being quite as good as the Fun Lovin' Criminals' take on it a few years back as the little-too-clean vocals just don't quite suit the sleazy nature of the track. Overall though, despite there being 14 tracks on here, this particular joyride feels as if it's over way too soon.

Quite simply, Jukebox Junkie is an album to cheer you up after a long day and then cost you way too much money tracking down the original versions of these songs. Like I said earlier, pretty much everything a good covers album should be then and all the better for it. 

Bandcamp Link

NITE SONGS RATING: 🌔🌔🌔🌔🌔🌔🌔🌔🌑🌑 (8/10)

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Garbage Days Revisited #29: The Quireboys - "Homewreckers And Heartbreakers" (2008)

Image
  "I played my hand in a rock 'n' roll band, it was my ace, my jack and my king/I rolled the dice to see what Lady Luck would bring, salvation or sin..."  - The Quireboys  - One For The Road In a way, I'm quite surprised I haven't covered the Quireboys either on Sounds From The Junkshop or here on Garbage Days Revisited yet. Unlike a lot of bands who were slung in with the "hair metal" tag in the late '80s and early '90s, I actually was  aware of the band when they had their brief flirtation with chart success around the turn of that decade and had a couple of their singles in my collection - Hey You  on a Now compilation (which sounds incredibly incongruous all these years later!) and There She Goes Again/Misled  on cassette single. For whatever reason though, they never quite became the firm favourites of mine that their fellow Soho dwelling glam rockers the Dogs D'Amour did. I'm not quite sure why - I think I just thought the Dogs
Read more

Garbage Days Revisited #74: Silverfish - "Organ Fan" (1992)

Image
  "You can't kill what you're afraid of...are you afraid of me?"  - Silverfish  - Big Bad Baby Pig Squeal I guess the obvious place to have written something on Silverfish would have been in one of the very early Sounds From The Junkshop but I'm ashamed to admit that they were a band who, while I was sort of aware of their presence at the time, I wouldn't really properly discover until well after they'd split.  I can remember the band name from the occasions they'd pop up on the Indie Top 10 on the ITV Chart Show but it was only when their singer Lesley Rankine cropped up as a guest vocalist on Therapy? 's Troublegum album (on Lunacy Booth  and Femtex ) that I decided to try and investigate their output in a bit more detail. Only to find they'd literally split up a few months before. Bugger. Silverfish hailed from Camden in the pre-Britpop days back when it was still the grimy scuzzy end of North London and the sort of place tourists would act
Read more

Album Review: Ming City Rockers - "Lime"

Image
  Hailing from Immingham near Grimsby (hence their name), the Ming City Rockers briefly looked like quite hot property a few years ago with their debut self-titled album being a prime slice of howled smalltown angst which picked them up enough plaudits to get Steve Albini in to produce the follow-up, 2016's  Lemon . And then...nothing. Seven years on from that sophomore effort and the group have returned, slimmed down to a three-piece and with a very noticeable change to their image. But the sound is very much the same with the sort of angry three-chord garage punk that made their debut such a good effort. The change seems to be that Lime  sees the Ming City Rockers taking their worldview out of the smalltowns and over to the nation as a whole. The sarky lead off single Jill Was An Anarchist  was a definite marker laid down and there's plenty more on Lime  where that came from such as the snarling Poor Old Jim  taking a swipe at alcoholic F*r*ge-supporting boomers ( "He us
Read more