Longevity is not something that Rock music was originally founded on, with established musical forms, and the establishment itself turning up their collective noses and dismissing what was new. As that sound continued beyond all initial estimations of demise, well, again acts weren’t supposed to be long lived, and the ebb and flow of trends meant that artists were on the whole built up, burnt out, and discarded in short order, with only a select few achieving a career that could be measured in decades, let alone years, or sometimes even months. What does that have to do with anything, let alone the forthcoming review? Well, the first time I saw Ricky Warwick perform live was now over 30 years ago with The Almighty, a band I followed through their ups and downs and charitable reformations, as well as his own solo shows, with Black Star Riders, and acoustic sets including a barnstormer a couple of years ago in Dundee with Damon Johnson. Hell, by the time I first saw him live, he’d already established himself on the punk scene, being a touring member of New Model Army. Basically, he is a musician who has paid his dues, travelling many miles on the road from small clubs to the hallowed fields of Castle Donington and everything in between, and during the current lock down has been keeping busy with live streams, and of course, the object of this review ‘When Life Was Hard And Fast’.
Opening the album is the title track, full of cocksure confidence, and every six string slinging cliché you could hope for. Is that a criticism? Well, in the hands of a lesser performer it could indeed be cheesier than a French gourmand’s larder, but when delivered by a seasoned veteran who has lived the life it portrays, it comes across as clean, honest, and life affirming. ‘You Don’t Love Me’ is a swaggering rock lament to broken hearts, another staple of music for as long as songs were first sung around a fire, a feeling of loss explored further in ‘I’d Rather Be Hit’, another anthem to lost love. The party feel returns with the stomp of ‘Gunslinger’, a track that sounds like it could be a long lost Thin Lizzy rocker, as indeed could the altogether faster ‘Never Corner A Rat’, with some punkish sneer thrown into the mix.
Away from hard rock, punk and metal, Ricky Warwick has never shied away from wearing his love of County on his sleeve, and no, not the rhinestone clad achy-breaky ‘God, Guns, and ‘Murica’ pish that many think of, but the down and dirty folk carried across the Atlantic by Scottish and Irish immigrants that developed into the dark musings of Cash and Nelson. That love is shown in the delivery of ‘Time Don’t Seem To Matter’, the vocal harmonies and strings that accompany the simply strummed acoustic guitar adding an air of melancholy beauty. That same sound is electrified and amplified in ‘Fighting Heart’; whether it would meet the ‘Rich Hall’ test of authenticity (look up his excellent country music documentaries on line folks) is not for me to say, but it is a world away from the saccharine crooning and gurning of the likes of Garth Brooks. After the stripped back ‘Clown of Misery’ that sounds like it could have been recorded in the same booth that the Soggy Bottom Boys cut their first record, the album finishes with ‘You’re My Rock and Roll’, a number that reeks of pomade drenched quiffs bobbing along to a well slapped double bass.
‘When Life Was Hard And Fast’ is not an album of innovation and new sounds; rather it is in many ways a collection of tracks that could have been picked from a spread of albums over the last 60 years plus, yet all delivered with the skill of the veteran that Ricky Warwick is, and with an energy that so many acts with less miles on the clock would be hard pressed to match.
(8/10 Spenny)
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