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Jim Jones is, of course, the scraggly British rock’n’roll Jesus who out-Stooged Iggy in the 80s with delirium rockers Thee Hypnotics, and has chased that fuzzy psych-punk high ever since under various names, line-ups and conjurations.
Quarrelsome Black Crowe Chris Robinson produced this album, and also provided some vocals, as did ‘Mrs’ Marc Bolan Gloria Jones. Green On Red mainman Chuck Prophet also wanders in for some guitar musings. Does this qualify the ‘All Stars’ nomenclature? Yes. Who were you expecting? Slash? C’mon, man, everybody cool is dead these days.
Much like fellow junk-punk-funker Jon Spencer, JJ’s sound these days is stripped-down and laid bare, free of the youthful 17-minutes-long-with-four-guitar-solos excesses his previous bands revelled in. More sweat, less blood, the sound of a well-dressed bluesman strutting his stuff in some late-night, off-the-grid swamp shack.
One of Jones’s most attractive qualities is his steadfast refusal to live in the real world. He hasn’t written a protest song in almost 40 years, and spends all his time in rock’n’roll land, a magical, mythical playground of easy sex and casual violence, where looking cool, smoking cigarettes and trysting with femme fatales are about the most important things you could possibly do.
That sleazy Shangri-La is where Cat Fight spends its entire running time, from the finger-poppin’ swagger of Gashman to the rubber-legged kiss-off of Let U Go. Opener Make It Rain is an irresistible funky garage burner that sounds like something The Black Crowes mighta done on their second album if they didn’t turn out to be a bunch of jamband hippies.
There’s plenty of soul on board as well. The Jones-led title track and the steamy Bekolah both give the horn section a workout, the latter fairly demanding a drunken slow dance. But the best stuff is all the up-tempo, greasy rock’n’roll, piano-bashing stompers like L U V U and Drink Me.
This record could change your life, if it needs changing. It’s gospel for people who only go to church for funerals. It’s a defiant burst of joy for a world in flames. I seriously don’t understand why this isn’t the most popular shit ever.
People wonder where all the good times have gone. Well, they’re right fucking here, Jack. Swoon to the sermons of the High Priest Of Saturday Night and maybe things’d look a little rosier on Monday morning.
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