Half a century on from their commercial peak, there’s a sense that (definite article dispensed with way back when) are a band performing a perennial encore, given the fact that their tour in 2015 was said to be their last. So although is being promoted as their “final studio album”, we’d surely be foolish to expect them never to return. Since the halcyon, Brian Connolly-led days of et al and being regulars on , their line-up changes have been so frequent that they make and look stable.
The one stout thread running through them all, though, is Andy Scott, whose lead guitar playing and cast-iron fringe has remained in situ since the band first rose to fame in the early 70s, bar six years after they split in 1981. And although the late Mr Connolly’s New Sweet fought their own corner for a while, and Steve Priest’s Sweet also spent a decade treading the boards before the bassist’s passing in 2020, Scott’s version is the only one to have made studio albums, the last one being the lockdown-created , which consisted of remotely recorded (due to covid) reworkings of their 1975 classic album . though, is their first set of original songs since 2002’s .
is far from the return to their roots that the title might suggest. Indeed, if you’d lost track of them back in the 70s then caught an airing of these tracks, you’d never guess whose name is on the cover. Chunky, boogie-infused glam-rock tunes made for stomping a platform boot to are in vanishingly short supply, as Scott’s version of Sweet long ago adopted the FM rock stylings of the 80s hair-metal generation who still held them in such high regard.
The pulsing power ballad and the anthemic could easily have been found on a late-80s album, while and could be long-lost tracks, with frontman Paul Manzi insisting on the latter track, rather improbably: ‘ ’ before a twin guitar solo kicks in. Nonetheless, on its own merits this is well-crafted stuff, suggesting the one quality they’ve retained all these years is an ear for a sharp hook and a rabblerousing chorus, Chinn & Chapman be damned. it isn’t.
Reliable rock’n’roll fun it remains. Johnny is a regular contributor to and 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 in the 90s (under the hard-to-shake teenage nickname Johnny Cigarettes) before branching out to newspapers such as and and magazines such as and, of course, and . Co-starring Axl, Slash and other heavy friends, Michael Schenker's My Years With UFO finds the mad axeman in phenomenal form "Many of you have been with us since the beginning": Uriah Heep announce farewell tour “There’s new artwork, there’s music that’s so punk rock from board tapes, there’s audio, visuals, everything”: Slipknot are planning a 25th anniversary reissue of their iconic debut album.
