Mad Shadows
On 5th January this year I tweeted to a friend Currently listening to an album from Sept. 1970 that was critically panned at the time and I’d never heard. Guess what? It’s really good. That album was Mad Shadows, Mott the Hoople’s second album, from when they were a hard-working band on the rise but hadn’t cracked the big time.
Nine months later and I still think that. The opener, Thunderbuck Ram comes out of the block like Black Sabbath, and the album never lets go, through a mix of rockers and Ian Hunter power ballads. In fact, I think most of this material would sit quite happily alongside Hunter’s recent output. Walkin’ With A Mountain could easily be one of their later hits.
We’re into the seventies with this album; the only strong sixties hangover is an affectionate tip of the hat to the Rolling Stones on Walkin’ With A Mountain. As ever with Ian Hunter, there is a strong whiff of Americana about some of the songs, but that’s a feature not a bug in this case. There are echoes of other bands: Threads of Iron swims in the same pond as Led Zeppelin, but I think its convergent evolution rather than imitation (and I’d sooner buy a copy of Mad Shadows than any individual Led Zeppelin album).
But the really odd thing about this album was that, even though I was completely unaware of it in the seventies, I nevertheless had strong flashbacks while listening to it. Somehow it conjures up something of the spirit of the age: RB211s, strikes and schooldays. Funny that.
I’d be tempted to by this album if I could find a cheap copy. One for the list. In the meantime I listened on Spotify. There’s also a YouTube playlist.
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