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Yes, technical prowess is all well and good. But rock’n’roll was built largely on larger-than-life characters who desperately, thirstily wanted to be stars, for the world to fall into an adoring faint at their Cuban-heeled feet, for the spotlight to shine on them and only them for ever. From Little Richard’s flirtatious self-aggrandisement to David Bowie’s constant reinvention, Freddie Mercury’s crowd-pleasing theatrical flair to Ozzy Osbourne’s Prince Of Darkness panto, the show-offs have always risen to the top.
Enter Des Rocs, aka Danny Rocco from New York City. The cover artwork of this, his third album, finds him dressed just like Vegas-era Elvis, all leather jacket, leather trousers and greasy quiff. Musically, To Hell And Back amps up the camp, based on sturdy garage rock foundations but if said garage was repurposed as a glitter-encrusted drag cave.
The comparisons to be made to other musicians are there more in attitude than sound. Legends Never Die is a mini-rock opera oozing with a shameless Muse pomposity; there’s a strutting, Jack White blues stomp to The King (Joe Chiccarelli, who worked on The White Stripes’ Icky Thump and The Raconteurs’ Consolers Of The Lonely is on no-holds-barred production here).
Fall Together is beamed in from a parallel universe where Freddie Mercury had the chance to make a James Bond theme, all synthetic strings and high drama. The cockiness reaches new heights on The Juice, riding in on a Whole Lotta Love-inspired riff and laying out its arena-rock stall, while Supernaturalize is a glam-soul stomper.
It’s not all surface sheen, though. Rocco’s storytelling skills match his ambition, as evidenced on The More She Wants, a more muted affair, but one steeped in torch-singer melodrama as he tells a tale of doomed romance that’s as old as rock’n’roll itself.
Plenty of people will question Rocco’s realness, and his authenticity, but you suspect that the singer is fine with that. You don’t get to the top without playing the game, and he is playing it to gold medal-winning standards. If it works he’ll be a TV star within the decade. If it doesn’t, you get the impression that his self-belief is so unshakeable, he’ll be a huge star in his own mind for the rest of his life anyway.
