The Adicts – All The Young Droogs
The Adicts – All The Young Droogs CD (DC-Jam Records)
There is only one appropriate way to describe ‘All The Young Droogs’, the 10th studio album from The Adicts and their first for DC-Jam Records – making them label-mates with JFA! – and it is this: it’s real horrorshow. The original lineup of Keith ‘Monkey’ Warren on vocals, Pete ‘Dee’ Davison and John ‘Scruff’ Ellis on guitars, Mel ‘Spider’ Ellis on bass, Michael ‘Kid Dee’ Davison on drums, and Dan ‘Fiddle Dan’ Gratziani on piano and other instrumentation is still in place – 30+ years down the line! – and kicking ass. Are there noticeable differences between the styles of, say, 1982’s manic ‘Sound Of Music’ and this album? Of course there are. The key difference is the level of maturity displayed on ‘All The Young Droogs’, from the songwriting to the performances. Is this a good thing? Boy howdy! You bet it is. The manic energy – the sped-up tempos, the snarling rage, the thematic quests for fun and a good take-out meal after a night of partying – found on The Adicts’ earliest records has been replaced by a steady mid-tempo swing and an ‘it is what it is, and what a ride it’s been!’ attitude. The title track, of course, is a tribute to ‘All The Young Dudes’, that ubiquitous classic written by David Bowie and made famous by Mott The Hoople. Here, The Adicts take the general structure of ‘Dudes’ and shake it up with a slinky reggae-influenced beat and an insatiable chorus sung by a group of children – which is brilliant in and of itself – but keep the tone and feel of Mick Ralphs’ and Ian Hunter’s riffs intact, even sneaking in a reimagining of the opening notes of the original solo at one point. Brilliant. The influence of Mott The Hoople, David Bowie, and other classic British rockers like T. Rex, is clear throughout the album, but is that really anything new? I don’t think so. It’s just easier to pick them out with the material here than it has been in years past. Tracks like ‘Rage Is The Rage’, ‘Love Lies Bleeding’, and ‘Catch My Heart’ are firmly rooted in the spaced-out glam rock of the aforementioned bands, yet are as distinctly The Adicts as anything else in the band’s repertoire. For ‘classic’ Adicts, though, look no further than ‘Horrorshow’ – in which Monkey dips into the deep past for a vocal performance that absolutely could have been recorded in the early 80s when these droogies were all about aggression – or the gang-vocal barnstormers ‘Stomper’ and ‘Battlefield W1’, both of which feature hooks so insatiable that I’m actually at a loss for words to explain just how deeply rooted into my brain they’ve become. On the subject of insatiable hooks, there are two tracks here – the keyboard-driven arena rocker ‘Wild’ and the chugging-riff slow-burner ‘Stop The World (I Wanna Get Off)’ (the latter of which features a Mick Ronson styled guitar solo that is nothing short of spine-tingling) – which rival anything in rotation on the only radio station that I can trust to turn to for music that actually matters to me, Little Steven’s Underground Garage on Sirius/XM. Talk about The Greatest Songs In The World! ‘All The Young Droogs’ is rounded out by two additional tracks, which are far from sleepers. ‘My Old Friend’ has the feel of vintage Madness – with no horns – and ‘To Us Tonight’ is a straight-up pub rocker in the style of Cock Sparrer. How great is that? Um, pretty damn great. In fact, if I had to sum up ‘All The Young Droogs’ in one word it probably wouldn’t be ‘horrorshow’ at all; the word I’d choose is ‘legendary’. The Impaler @impalerspeaks
