Michael Landau, the guitar legend, is back with ‘rock bottom’, a brand-new, ten-track album released via respected Mascot Label imprint Provogue. Like some long-lost relic from the seventies, ‘Rock Bottom’ feels like an album out of time, recorded in a hermetically sealed bubble untouched by the impersonal chatter of social media. Beautifully recorded, it takes the listener on a tour of classic rock and blues, offering powerful pastiches of numerous touchstones from a bygone era without ever feeling derivative or bereft of individual inspiration.
As wonderfully whimsical as its subject matter, ‘squirrels’ is a psychedelic wig out that sounds like the Doors covering Syd-era Floyd. With its Hammond flourishes, lysergic vocals and stabs of barely coherent guitar delivered with a gently jazzy aura that seems beamed in from another planet all together, it’s the perfect scene setter for an album that takes the listener on a lengthy trip. That hazy sense of a clock running backwards continues with the Hendrix-esque jam ‘bad friend’, which pits David Frazee’s gritty vocals and Michael’s virtuoso guitar flourishes against one another on a track that could easily be the result of ‘are you experienced’ being re-recorded by a ‘Bitches Brew-era Miles Davis high on the fumes from glue and punk. Riffing on a universal theme, ‘getting old’ fends off age with its beautiful, bluesy licks, improvisational vibe and somnolent rhythm (Alan Hertz). In contrast, ‘we all feel the same’ is arguably the most traditionally bluesy number on display, drawing the listener away from the sun-soaked hills of Los Angeles and into a darkened bar somewhere in New York, redolent of stale cigarette smoke and spilled beer. It’s a wonderful track, not least as it offers up some of the album’s most expressive soloing. ‘We’re alright’ is a sparky number with a toe-tapping rhythm and a hint of menace that harks back to Screaming Trees psyche-masterpiece ‘dust’. Delivered with ferocious energy and given weight thanks to Alan’s propulsive performance on the drums, ‘we’re alright’ is four minutes of sonic-bliss and it’s with some regret that you notice it fade away in a growl of heavily-amped distortion.
Another track that recalls the earthen beauty of Screaming Trees is ‘One tear away’, a song on which the vocals sound so uncannily like Mark Lanegan that you all but have to check the label to make sure you’re listening to the right record. A dark and dusty blues, it’s a beautiful song with some truly exquisite guitar work, Michael pouring his heart and soul onto the fretboard in a manner that tugs at the heartstrings. The mood lightens considerably with ‘poor dear’, a track that recalls the Dire Straits circa ‘brothers in arms’, Michael’s loose licks giving the piece a jammed-out feel that happily stands in opposition to the modern trend of processing everything into oblivion. A silken mix of jazz and blues, ‘freedom’ is a beautifully understated piece of music given rich texture thanks to the Hammond organ and judicious use of reverb. A track that has a similar effect to drinking magic mushroom tea before watching The Doors live at Hollywood Bowl, ‘freedom’ is a jazz odyssey complete with Sonic Youth guitar noise. Remarkably the first thing that comes to mind on the oddball art rock of ‘heaven in the alley’ is Deus, as David employs a falsetto and the band explore rhythms and textures in a way that most artists are afraid to do. It’s the blues, but reimagined by Frank Zappa and the Velvet Underground and it’s thoroughly, confoundingly brilliant. It leaves only the scene-stealing ‘speak now, make your peace’ to conclude an album that seems to delight in defying expectation. Built around a slinky beat, it has a dirty, Bad Seeds (back when Barry Adamson was a member) vibe that speaks to guttering street lights, pouring rain and Fedoras. It’s a suitably jazzy, wilfully oblique ending to a brilliant record.
‘Rock Bottom’ is one of those wonderfully varied albums that slips effortlessly between genres without ever feeling forced or inchoate. With each piece linked by Michael’s intuitive playing, the album feels as if the band were finding their way through the pieces as the tape rolled, with the result that it all feels wonderfully intuitive. There’s a temptation to sit and think “but no one makes records like this anymore, do they?” But that’s the point and that’s the brilliance of ‘Rock Bottom’ – some musicians do care enough to make records like this and Michael Landau is one such musician. Not a record for everyone perhaps, but for those switched on to music at its most fluidly creative, ‘rock bottom’ will undoubtedly be seen as a masterpiece. 9
