Although he’s hardly a household name, Craig Willis Bell is a man deserving of your respect. As bassist with legendary proto-Punk outfit Rocket From The Tombs, he was a mainstay of the band that would launch both The Dead Boys and seminal Cleveland, Ohio group Pere Ubu, not to mention having a hand in bequeathing us some of rock’s most snotty, primeval songs like ‘Sonic Reducer’, ‘Life Stinks’ and the ultra-nihilistic ‘Ain’t It Fun’.
Thankfully, unlike his late contemporaries Stiv Bators and Peter Laughner, we can still speak of Bell in a hale and hearty present tense. Indeed, as well as being a part of the 2003 RFTT re-union (which produced the ‘Rocket Redux’ album), Bell has kept on keeping on down the years, working with a series of well-known Connecticut bands like Saucers and The Plan before re-locating to Indianapolis where he now resides.
His current outfit, THE DOWN-FI, suggest his powers have anything but failed him. ‘America Now’ is a sharp, old skool twin guitar, bass and drums record played by a neat and gritty Rock’n’Roll band which wears its’ heart(s) on its’ rolled-up sleeves. But hell, Bell helped to invent this stuff to begin with and, in any case, when it sounds this bitchin’, who cares?
So we’re talking Rock’n’Roll with capital R’s here, complete with real guitar solos veering from Lou Reed experimental to John Perry flash. Bell spits his uncompromising lyrics (“I don’t want no beauty, ‘cos you just throw it back in my face”)with a gravelly bark akin to New Christs’ frontman Rob Younger and virtually everything here gets its’ rocks off with aplomb whether its’ slant is tough’n’janglesome (‘Let It Go’), angular Velvets-style pop (‘Tears In Her Eyes’) or even a surprise cars and girls celebration like ’62 Hawk’, even if this latter does have a suitably fatalistic ending.
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So it’s all good, though the album has a couple of major our de forces which help it to elevate it to a far greater plain. Written by David Thomas and the late Peter Laughner, ‘So Cold’ is plucked from the RFTT vault and is all fractured and diseased riffs and slow menace akin to ‘Ain’t It Fun’, pepped up by some gloriously expressive lead guitar and Bell’s desperate wail. At the other end of the spectrum, ‘America Now’ is an incendiary and entirely contemporary state of the nation address, opening with an expectant rush akin to the Velvets’ ‘Heroin’ before Bell vents his spleen in memorable style (“you do your duty for a pat on the back and go pursue your dreams on your side of the tracks”) and gleefully goads his troops into giving their most visceral performance yet.
Craig Willis Bell is too grizzled and gnarly to be taken to the bosom of the young pretenders being peddled by the NME and their ilk, but you sure as hell wish people less than half his age could feel a similar rage to the one he articulates so vividly here with his current bunch of charges. Over thirty years into his under-rated career, he returns to show us anger can be an energy and produce vital Rock’n’Roll. Thank God for that. We need it now more than ever.
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