A landmark birthday appears to have fuelled much of Lofgren’s first album in five years, never more so than on 60 Is The New18 and its witty chronicle of an ageing rocker still living the life of a young gun.
‘Got a purple Porsche, young girls in my phone/Man, I never knew I could feel this alone,’ he sings, to a driving rock beat, and the passage of time is also at the heart of the title track and Ain’t Too Many Of Us Left.
Still, Lofgren is sprightly enough to play most of the instruments himself, multi-tracking the bulk of the album on his own in the studio.
A few other veterans (Paul Rodgers, Lou Gramm, Sam Moore) stop by to lend a hand on specific songs; Rodgers in particular makes his mark of the swampy chug of Amy Joan Blues, while a more introspective Nils takes a leaf out of intermittent employer Bruce Springsteen’s book on the acoustic When You Were Mine.
