Twenty-seven years on the Hoodoo Gurus still rock

Nearly three decades after this Australian band debuted on college radio with Stoneage Romeos and Mars Needs Guitars, changes in the line-up, break-ups and reformations, hiatuses, and one member’s recovery from cancer haven’t dimmed the group’s energy. Fronted by singer-songwriter Dave Faulkner, the band’s more soulful than in their earlier years, and though they’re not as playful in doling out rapid-fire pop-culture references, they’re still plenty of fun and, best of all, they rock. The band packs many styles into this hour-long, sixteen song album. There are Stones-y rockers (“What’s in it for Me?”), Clash-styled martial beats (“A Few Home Truths”), lumbering twang that suggests a meeting of Lee Hazlewood and Neil Diamond (“Over Nothing?”), retro soul (“Only in America”) and country-rock (“Somebody, Take Me Home”).

Faulkner’s early songs keyed on the immediate fascinations of a twenty-something, but in his fifties he writes more from a life lived. The first single, “Crackin’ Up,” considers the pressure of stardom and the feeling of being handled as a commodity. Faulkner wanders without nostalgia through his back pages on the burning Oingo Boingo-styled rocker, “Burnt Orange,” and sees his adult friends’ fascinations (religion, plastic surgery, meditation) as hang-ups on “I Hope You’re Happy.” The penultimate “1968” rocks with a terrific garage-psych sound, and “The Stars Look Down” closes the album with startled thoughts of mortality. It’s a fitting finish to an album that finds the Hoodoo Gurus’ navigating the realizations of middle-age without letting them break their rock ‘n’ roll spirit. [©2010 hyperbolium dot com]

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