Australia's Claude Hay is an independent spirit and DIY wizard who has built his own house and twin neck guitar. His customized tour van includes his own recording studio. If he is going places, it will certainly be on his own steam.
But the way his record label's owner, Chad Conley, praises this level of autonomy makes him sound like an asset to a corporate business rather than a radical rock and roll star : "he's mature and able to manage himself and we believe he has a high potential to appeal to a mainstream audience". In keeping with this image, the tunes on Hay's second album seem less about innovation and more concerned to showcase his virtuoso skills as part of a solid entertainment package.
His prowess as a blues guitarist makes him a kind of one man ZZ Top although standard topics like sex, drugs and rock'n'roll are strangely absent. The only pussy here is the feline variety in a song about going on tour and fretting about how his pet cat is coping (Heading Home).
The album was born out of a guilty love of fried food and contains two hymns to the waist expanding, artery clogging temptations of American fast food. Get Me Some celebrates New York pizzas while the title track takes a more critical line, blaming the "dominating companies" for a trend which means that anyone asking for alternative options like a garden salad is considered insane.
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Other songs elevate domestic annoyances to the scale of social scandal like the '"tragedy" of a printer failing when the warranty has expired (How Can You Live With Yourself), buying a dud car off the internet (Don't Give Me That), or waiting an age to pay a bill by phone (On Hold).
Hendrix would not have been so rapidly elevated to the status of guitar God if had he confined himself to such subject matter and there's something incongruous about high energy blues-funk tunes covering such topics.
The showstopper of the eleven song collection is a manic, liberty taking cover of We Will Rock You but this is not enough to salvage an album where style is not matched by substance.
Claude Hay on Myspace
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