BOZ BOORER - SOME OF THE PARTS
Fabrique Records

If you know of Boz Boorer, it’s probably as the guitarist and songwriter for – gulp – Morrissey. Or perhaps for his previous work with The Polecats, Adam Ant, Edwyn Collins and others. Or maybe you’ve sampled his earlier solo records, in which case well done you. Assuming they are of a similar quality to this album, you’ve made a decent choice.

Pinning down a sound to Boorer is hard. His style is quite fluid to say the least, from the sub-Oasis of Slippery Forces to the dark, almost Johnny Cash flavoured blues of Saunders Ferry Lane or the Morriconesque jazz pop of Bozanova Brown, which plays like the score of a lost giallo movie – I doubt you could play a single track from this album to anyone as a sample of what to expect.

That’s not a bad thing of course. In a world where most bands rehash the same basic template for their entire career, having someone with the wide range of musical influences and willingness to explore them all in one album is quite refreshing. And the best bits of this record, like the aforementioned Bozanova Brown, are genuinely glorious.

Elsewhere, the album slams into kick ass rockabilly for Tokyo Calling and Cast Iron Arm, while Jackie Brown feels like Seventies pop mixed with late Eighties acoustic rock – irritatingly infectious and effortlessly slick. There’s more jazz – the amusingly brief Jazz Interlude is pure Acker Bilk, while Doctor Jazz is more swinging, sitting just on the right side of being wildly cheesy. Of Hooves feels musically like Nick Cave scoring a David Lynch film, with fucked up spoken vocals giving it a warped and unsettling atmosphere, before the albums winds up with the grubby rockabilly blues of I’m Gonna Make Your Mind, which feels like an outtake from Las Vegas Grind. In a parallel, better universe, strippers are grinding to this right now.

Then there’s the swamp water grunge cover of Sunday Morning Coming Down, a sleazy, filthy version of the Kris Kristofferson track that feels like it was written for this.

And that’s what makes the album work – if it sounds like a compilation album, then it’s a well-structured movie soundtrack rather than a thrown together chart collection. It all somehow works despite itself. If you like your music to come in several flavours, but appreciate them all being shot through with a slice of down ‘n’ dirty sex, then this is probably going to make you very happy indeed. It did me, anyway.

DAVID FLINT

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