Thunder: Rock City 12 – The Baubles Are Back In Town

Festive Funder fer fans.

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Given their official ‘retired’ status, this is effectively a lap of honour for the cockney rock troupe. Having decided to maintain activity by continuing with their annual Christmas shows, The Baubles Are Back In Town (we shit thee not...) is the latest recorded product of this Thunder brainwave.

It’s an amiable set of sway-along rock‘n’roll, at its best in feel-good piano-led highlights (such as Everybody Wants Her), driving Santana-esque guitar moments (Just Another Suicide) and no frills romps (You Can’t Keep A Good Man Down). All of which goes some way to compensating for pace lost in innocuous, drifty ‘plod-rock’ points.

Punctuated by Danny Bowes’ shouts of “Bloody marvellous!”, it remains a cheery affair. How do they end this festive live return? With bloody Slade – Merry Christmas Everybody, that’s how.

Corny? Christ yes, but difficult to induce anything other than eye rolling and fond smiling. Sure to delight the Thunder massive.

Polly Glass
Polly Glass
Deputy Editor, Classic Rock

Polly is deputy editor at Classic Rock magazine, where she writes and commissions regular pieces and longer reads (including new band coverage), and has interviewed rock's biggest and newest names. She also contributes to Louder, Prog and Metal Hammer and talks about songs on the 20 Minute Club podcast. Elsewhere she's had work published in The Musician, delicious. magazine and others, and written biographies for various album campaigns. In a previous life as a women's magazine junior she interviewed Tracey Emin and Lily James – and wangled Rival Sons into the arts pages. In her spare time she writes fiction and cooks.