Adam Hattaway and the Haunters new album High Hopes is put through its paces at the Whammy Bar, and we are along for the ride as this Terraplane flashes it lights and blows its horns.
Familiar with Hattaway’s obsessions with Belfast Cowboy and Glimmer Twins. Jangle Folk Rock of the Byrds and Petty pathways. A nod to Buddy Holly and uplifting Pop melodies.
All here on the new High Hopes and we come to appreciate the literary style of some key songs. Likely they have always been there if we trawl through the back catalogue.
Lou Reed regarded himself as a novelist working within the Rock’n’roll discipline. The outside observer. That involved role-playing which could often threaten to get out of control. Chasing after the Pythagorean ideal. Know thyself.
Rock as art. I love Rock’n’roll. I just wish it was different. The Prog path post Pepper, and Pink Floyd may just be an evolutionary dead-end.
I love Rock’n’Roll. I just wish it was better. The Velvet Underground and their myriad progeny.(A different Prog).
The correction of Punk arose from that. Sid Vicious nicked his stage name from an early Reed song.
First song on the album, Good Times. Protagonist seems drugged out and sludgy. I don’t feel well/ Must be under a spell. Americana of the semi-popular. The underlying dread of the third Big Star album, Sister Lovers.
Face like a cheap motel is a good put-down. Heart shaped like a homicide/ Suicide/ Pages of a paperback crime. James Ellroy territory, the current demon dog of American writers.
On stage the band play it with grimy Memphis R’n’B accents as they power it up.
Similar with High Horse. Hattaway borrows from the phrasing of Reed in songs like Walk on the Wild Side, or the first part of Sweet Jane. Sweet backing vocals from Morgan La Fae.
Present tonight for the show, and she lends her Emmylou harmony to Mercy for The Weak. One of several songs which have the louche outlaw Country Americana atmosphere of the Stones Exiles album.
A song of profound regret and heart break, the closest to the Gram Parsons influenced Stones of Wild Horses.
Room to Breathe takes the same path with prominent acoustic guitar lines and Hattaway doing a Jagger falsetto climb when he gets to lines like thought police were talking to you.
Ain’t No Surprise does play more conventional Eagles softer melodic style which the guitars elevate on the live stage.
Haunters playing tonight. Elmore Jones and Liam Quinn guitars, Samuel White bass, and Holdyn Skinner drums.
If You Got Nowhere Else to Go has the blue tones of Roy Orbison and Chris Isaak. This is the presence of Marlon Williams behind the sound desk as producer. Border music with Mexican swing.
Conical Hill is not played tonight, but Hattaway gets to indulge his Van obsessions with a song which reminds me of Stoned Me from the classic Moondance. A vocal highlight from the album. I think I can hear a fiddle in there. A little of the chorus of Mighty Quinn is grafted in. The Pop version that is.
I Don’t Believe in Love is a highlight. The Roots Country of Exiles with a prominent piano lead taking it to Gospel. Singer can climb to the home on high.
When faith is all run out, the heart is the healing component of the soul.
This song opens the show, but they don’t capture it tonight. There is no keyboard, and the sound is a little ill-defined for the first few numbers.
My Screaming Machine starts with the imprecation to get yourself together. Pleasant Country Rock on the album and given an impressive lift on stage.
Paranoid Kid sounds like something Gerry Goffin and Carole King would have written for the Monkees. Bright and sunny Pop of ’67 but the decadence of Alex Chilton is lurking in the shadows.
That fits. Michael Nesmith went on to establish the ground rules of Country Rock as much as the Byrds.
Swinging tremolo guitars and perfectly presented as the 70’s Laurel Canyon sound tonight.
Dark Places is the last song on the album and Hattaway digs deep into his Van obsession to make it sound like one off Veedon Fleece. Falsetto vocals and in a way it is a tribute to the spirit of Dark End of the Street.
Throws up the lyric there’s no communist plot, which sounds like a Morrison phrase. Not played tonight.
There is a wide age range tonight and it’s the younger that get to swing and dance.
Hattaway gets wild with the vocals and tries to move around as much as the central stage pillar will allow.
They do Riding a River, cowritten with Delaney Davidson, a relentless rhythmic drive in Jook Joint fashion.
Last To Leave. The bass guitar has been holding it down all night and here he has the Sixties Stax pulse going.
Salt may start like another Stone Roller. A slow tempo, but Hattaway end up taking it to the mystic, paying homage to the Caldonian Soul. Just a stranger in this world.
Finish with a cover of Dylan’s Grooms Still Waiting at the Altar, as a Southern Rocker.
High Horse has many riches as an album. It will grow on you.
Adam Hattaway and the Haunters give it a great launch from the Whammy.
Rev. Orange Peel