Steve Wynn & The Miracle 3: Northern Aggression

Three decades on, Dream Syndicate veteran still in explosive form.

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On his first record with The Miracle 3 in five years, Wynn fine-tunes many of the characteristics that have marked his prolific career, while maintaining the combustibility of the band’s previous output.

Opener Resolution, coming in on a wave of Stooges menace, summons up a (magic) mushroom cloud of feedback squall, detuned guitars and warring drums before veering off into the stratosphere to leave a glorious trail of psych-rock destruction in its wake.

With guitarist Jason Victor on blistering form throughout, elemental humdingers such as Cloud Splitter maintain the hallucinatory glow. Wynn’s range of character is put to good use on the unnerving Consider The Source.

The Death Of Donny B could be cold-hearted reportage straight from the Lou Reed Handbook but it’s actually a cover from a 60s anti-drug propaganda film. All the better for being played ‘straight’, of course.

Gavin Martin

Late NME, Daily Mirror and Classic Rock writer Gavin Martin started writing about music in 1977 when he published his hand-written fanzine Alternative Ulster in Belfast. He moved to London in 1980 to become the NME’s Media Editor and features writer, where he interviewed the Sex Pistols, Joe Strummer, Pete Townshend, U2, Bruce Springsteen, Ian Dury, Killing Joke, Neil Young, REM, Sting, Marvin Gaye, Leonard Cohen, Nina Simone, James Brown, Willie Nelson, Willie Dixon, Madonna and a host of others. He was also published in The Times, Guardian, Independent, Loaded, GQ and Uncut, he had pieces on Michael Jackson, Van Morrison and Frank Sinatra featured in The Faber Book Of Pop and Rock ’N’ Roll Is Here To Stay, and was the Daily Mirror’s regular music critic from 2001. He died in 2022. 

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