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South London power trio Red Racer recorded this muscular debut in the fabled Rancho de la Luna studio in the California desert, surrounded by various Queens Of The Stone Age and Masters Of Reality veterans.

Fronted by multi-instrumentalist songwriter John Hogg, Red Racer’s revved-up mid-Atlantic style is rooted in post-grunge dynamics: too melodic and skinny-jeans for classic metal, too punky and abrasive for pop, but too sleek and modernist for retro-rock.

An angular new-wave urgency propels Put It Out and Cover Me, while the parched desert landscape makes its presence felt on the gravel-voiced bluesy snarler Good Times, and the lightly psychedelic Such A Long Way becomes a tender fever dream of homesickness for far-off loved ones. Hardly groundbreaking stuff, but bursting with energy and bite.

Stephen Dalton has been writing about all things rock for more than 30 years, starting in the late Eighties at the New Musical Express (RIP) when it was still an annoyingly pompous analogue weekly paper printed on dead trees and sold in actual physical shops. For the last decade or so he has been a regular contributor to Classic Rock magazine. He has also written about music and film for Uncut, Vox, Prog, The Quietus, Electronic Sound, Rolling Stone, The Times, The London Evening Standard, Wallpaper, The Film Verdict, Sight and Sound, The Hollywood Reporter and others, including some even more disreputable publications.