There's something unashamedly old-school about Steve Mackay's Yoda-like 'Sometimes Like This I Talk'. It's perhaps not altogether surprising: Mackay has been around a long time, and while 'veteran' can be seen to imply 'old fart who’s knocked around long enough to deserve respect', in Mackay's case, the respect is due from the outset. The man who played sax with The Stooges has produced an album that emanates more cool and contains more decent tunes than the vast majority of those produced by the hip young acts that have got the press in a lather and who'll have been forgotten in less than six months.
The overall tone of 'Sometimes Like This I Talk' shows a leaning toward jazz-tinged jamming, with the title track kicking things off with a freestyling sax solo that paves the way for the heads-down rockin' ruckus of 'Dead Chevys' that radiates a classic vintage feel.
Located at the mid-point, 'Rue Interdit d'Afficher' provides a brief interlude of semi-ambient avant-garde experimental noodling before returning to a laid-back jazz-infused vibe, with 'The Prisoner' having a particularly expansive feel to it. Ypsi Jim shows up and gives a vocal that's a dead ringer of Iggy Pop's sardonic drawl, while Mike Watt's bass here and on a number of other tracks compliments the composition perfectly.
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In places - particularly the lengthy workouts that are 'Song for Baghdad' and 'Lost in the Fog' - 'Sometimes Like This I Talk' simply feels too trad by contemporary standards to be worthy of a man of Mackay's musical history. Still, just when things seem to be getting a bit comfortable, Mackay leads his collaborators into the kind of territory that demonstrates precisely why he deserves our reverence. 'Lament for the Leaving of the Isle of Lewis' is a sprawling, mesmerising 9-minute epic that reminds me of The Psychedelic Furs – specifically the wall of sound of 'Flowers' on their eponymous debut album – with a swirling Doors-esque Hammond organ. 'Stradavarius's Cat' is eccentric, borderline weird, even, and 'Zombie Chevys' and 'Kristallnacht' similarly demonstrate Mackay's capacity for experimentalism, stylistic diversity and decent tunes, rounding off an album that’s wide-ranging, varied and makes for pleasurable listening.
Steve Mackay Online
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