Diamond Dogs - Slap Bang Blue Rendezvous (Wild Kingdom Records)

I love the Diamond Dogs; If there’s a band that’s done more to keep the flame alive for true, honking, barroom boogie over the last twenty years then they’re unfamiliar to me; And in frontman Sören “Sulo” Karlsson they possess one of the last great, full-force rock n’rollers to walk the face of our increasingly benighted planet. If you love whiskey-soaked, seventies flavoured hedonism but haven’t yet come across the ‘Dogs, then Slap Bang Blue Rendezvous is the perfect place to set that grave mistake right…

The best thing about DD is that they attack their rock n’roll not through the usual avenue of the Stones and The Beatles – though, as ever, there is a fair bit of Mick n’Keef lurking in the shadows here – but through the prism of British glam and pub rock of the seventies. What If I Knocked, the second track on this sprawling, twenty four choon double elpee, is a beautiful case in point, pure r n’b mayhem designed for sweaty pub consumption, the ghost of Graham Parker and the Rumour never far from Karlsson’s pen. Third track Everything’s Fine adds a bit of Britpop swagger to the mix, guitarists Lars Karlsson and Slim Martin building an impressive wall of sound whilst The Duke of Honk hammers away on the piano. It’s deliriously enjoyable stuff from a band that’s made this type of music their own over the course of thirty one years.

Thirty one years… what’s most remarkable about that number is the fact that there is absolutely nothing on SBBR that sounds hackneyed or tired, much less forced or, indeed false. These guys live and breathe this stuff, and that enthusiasm absolutely seeps from every pore of this record, from the world-weary balladry of a Rock In The Sea, through the fun-time poptastics of You Shouldn’t Be Lonely On A Saturday Night right through to the final strains of bleary-eyed closer Blind Broke Patron Saint. No rock n’roll device is left untouched in the quest to recreate the glory days of r n’b-fuelled seventies rock, no lyric left to chance or simply thrown carelessly in because it sounds good. Karlsson is a master storyteller, backed up by musicians who simply bleed for the cause. That’s a powerful combination, and once again it’s a combination that pays the ultimate dividend for Diamond Dogs… “I know we’re a hopeless dying breed’ says Karlsson at the start of Rock It And Roll It; He’s right, of course – but while bands like the Dogs are alive maybe we’re not quite so hopeless as it seems, and for that me must give thanks.

If you’re an old rocker, whether you wear high-heeled boots or blue suede shoes, then this is an absolute must-have album.