Five Things

So, The Bronx, kings of shouty, noisy aggropunk, have swapped their guitars for guitarrons, violins and vihuelas, and dressed up like Five Hispanic Pearly Kings and Queens to deliver an album of Mariachi music. We’ll be honest, we didn’t see that coming. Even more surprisingly, it’s actually really good, and, as a magnifying-glass-toting JJ DUNNING sniffs out, when bands stride boldly in the direction marked ‘DIFFERENT’, that’s not normally the case…

Chris Cornell

Oh. Dear. Can you see the dodgy facial hair now being worn by former Soundgarden and Audioslave rocker Chris Cornell? Does it set alarm bells ringing? The way that it sweeps around those gilded bronze lips and onto his Nivea-softened chin, goading you into noticing the hint of a surfer dude necklace, designed to set ladies’ palms to moist, so that they don’t even spot the questionable PVC qualities of his black jacket. Having released ‘Scream’ in March – a Timbaland produced hip-hop/R&B album – he now thinks he’s the rock-hop James Dean. In reality, he’s just nailed the look of one of The X Factor’s cruddest exports. Kids, the man who wrote ‘Badmotorfinger’ is dead. It’s Chico time!

Neil Young

If 1981’s ‘Re-ac-tor’ marked Young’s first tippy-toe steps into the shallow-end of electronica, then ‘Trans’ was a bellyflop from the top level of the diving board. Recorded in California and Hawaii in 1982, it featured huge, clumpy synclaviers (the room-sized digital boxes that became the workhorse of the 80s), an army of electric pianos, and so much vocoder that it made Kraftwerk sound like Elliott Smith. Critics loved it, but his record label, Geffen, weren’t convinced, and when he followed it up with a horrendous rockabilly album (‘Everybody’s Rockin’) in 1983, they sued him for making “uncharacteristic music with little or no chance of commercial success”. Razorlight must be due in court soon, eh?

Frank Turner

Former Eton scholar Frank Turner used to scream throatily above a maelstrom of smashing cymbals and angry guitars as frontman of Million Dead. Then, in September 2005, the band split as Turner left to become a folk musician. His full solo albums since, ‘Sleep Is For The Week’ and ‘Love & Ire’, are blander than a paper-pulp flavoured Angel Delight. There’s a new one due next month. Oh goody.

Tom Jones

“Refugee Camp!” howls Wyclef Jean in the opening bars of Tom Jones’ 2002 hip-hop album ‘Mr. Jones’. Immediately in the background you can hear the bright orange granddad turn to the engineer and say, “Turn me up, give me some more”. It’s a bit like hearing the Duke Of Edinburgh politely asking for some more crack. Jones should have left the engineer alone, at least somebody in the studio was trying to preserve his dwindling reputation by keeping his mic turned down. Suddenly, next to this, Chico Cornell looks super-credible.

Kevin Rowland 

Sometimes it’s not just an artist’s nose for a tune that deserts them. Often their creative meltdowns can bugger their cool-o-meter all the way to Kaputsville. Take Dexy’s Midnight Runners’ Kevin Rowland; in 1980 he wore a donkey jacket and a woolly hat. He looked ace. By 1999, he was wearing a blue dress and a pearl necklace on the cover of his horrendous solo album ‘My Beauty’. It was a perfect signpost to the muck-covered “reinterpretations” of classic songs available on the disc within. At least Big Kev’s excuse was candid, as he told the Guardian in 2003, “I was nuts”. Fair dos.

JJ Dunning