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It certainly sounded like a fun idea on paper: Ian Gillan reconnecting with one of the bands he used to play with as a teenager in the early 60s, and recording an album without modern technology. The result, however, is an album of rock’n’roll and R&B covers that sound woefully anaemic. The pace is uniformly cantering and sedate, the guitars sound jangly and toothless, and it plods when it should stomp. Meanwhile, Gillan’s formidable vocals sound stripped of their power and passion, even though they’re pushed so far to the front of the mix that the backing vocals sound like they’re in a different postcode. Hats off for trying something different, chaps, but maybe keep it to yourself next time.

Johnny is a regular contributor to Prog and Classic Rock magazines, both online and in print. Johnny is a highly experienced and versatile music writer whose tastes range from prog and hard rock to R’n’B, funk, folk and blues. He has written about music professionally for 30 years, surviving the Britpop wars at the NME in the 90s (under the hard-to-shake teenage nickname Johnny Cigarettes) before branching out to newspapers such as The Guardian and The Independent and magazines such as Uncut, Record Collector and, of course, Prog and Classic Rock.

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