Wilko Johnson - Blow Your Mind album review

Wilko Johnson’s first album of original material in 30 years

Wilko Johnson - Blow Your Mind

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Wilko Johnson - Blow Your Mind

Wilko Johnson - Blow Your Mind

1. Beauty
2. Blow Your Mind
3. Marijuana
4. Tell Me One More Thing
5. That's The Way I Love You
6. Low Down
7. Take It Easy
8. I Love The Way You Do
9. It Don't' Have To Give You The Blues
10. Lament
11. Say Goodbye
12. Slamming

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When Wilko Johnson wrote the songs that comprise Blow Your Mind, he didn’t believe he would ever get the chance to enter a studio and record them. Following his astonishing recovery from supposedly terminal pancreatic cancer, however, it’s more than appropriate that he has done so. 

This is classic Wilko – songs like It Don’t Have To Give You The Blues could have been recorded at any time in the last half-century. His style is as abrasive as ever, at once straight-ahead and splashing and chopping all over the shop, with shades of everyone from Chris Montez to Beefheart. 

But this is no pub-rock clatter – these songs are underpinned by the smoothly oiled, high-functioning rhythm section of Norman Watt-Roy (bass) and Dylan Howe (drums). 

Most remarkable are songs like Marijuana, written when Wilko believed he was going to die. Yet even then he was upbeat: ‘Feels so good/Deep down in my misery.’ 

This album is a monument to an eccentric, indefatigable, indestructible spirit who refused

David Stubbs

David Stubbs is a music, film, TV and football journalist. He has written for The Guardian, NME, The Wire and Uncut, and has written books on Jimi Hendrix, Eminem, Electronic Music and the footballer Charlie Nicholas.