Morrissey hasn’t had much need for his band recently, so ‘musical director’ Boz Boorer is filling the downtime by returning to his solo career.
As the title might suggest, Boorer’s first album in four years finds him trawling through the archives, reviving Doctor Jazz, a song he co-wrote with Kirsty MacColl for Brian Setzer (one of only two pure rockabilly tracks here) and dusting off Jackie Brown, originally earmarked for a Faces-inspired band he was putting together with members of Camden country outfit The Rockingbirds.
There’s a dizzying array of styles on offer, most executed with verve and vibrancy, from the Leonard Cohen-like doom ballad Saunders Ferry Lane to the straight country of Kris Kristofferson’s Sunday Morning Coming Down, and the raucous garage rock of I’m Gonna Make Your Mind to the ragged Mott glam of Slippery Forces.
