People often get rock and its older, wiser sibling, rock ‘n’ roll, mixed up. If the rock genre seems to be an overly earnest, deadly serious onslaught of big riffs (often played by people in big shorts) and complicated guitar work (often played by people with equally complicated hair), then rock ‘n’ roll is what was there before everything got so fervent and imperious.
Rock ‘n’ roll has groove; it swings, it swaggers, it is wilfully just loose enough, sometimes louche even. If rock music is the guy that turns up to fix your boiler, rock ‘n’ roll is the cool guy that seduces your older sister. Richard Davies & The Dissidents make precisely that sort of music.
If their debut, Human Traffic, signaled their desire to head off down a particular sonic road, one where melody is as important as musical muscle, where grace balances groove and grit, and where songwriting is everything, High Times & Misdemeanours is the sound of them opening up the throttle, easing back in the seat and seeing just how fast (metaphorically speaking, of course,) this baby can go.
Right from the off, “Keep Your Fires Burning” signposts the album’s intent, blending Stonesy blues with an echo of those Laurel Canyon songwriters, but it is perhaps “Soldier of Fortune” that sees the band hit its stride, the sort of thing that Tom Petty would have wrestled you bodily to the ground to get his hands on back in the day.
“Human on the Inside” leans into more balladic realms and does so perfectly, a song wrapped in hazy tones and warm textures. The recent single “Lead Me Out of the Wilderness” is full of Keef-like guitar slashes and licks, and “Lover of the Bayou” is a vehicle for some great southern blues lines.
Things end on the most positive of notes with “Let’s Live For Today,” (amen to that) which, possibly because of the spiraling keyboard riff that runs through the song, reminds me of Lords of the New Church, which, of course, is never a bad thing.
High Times & Misdemeanours sounds like a collection of songs you have listened to all your life. Richard and his sonic gang sound like that band that opened for Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers. They sound like that band your older brother used to play when you were growing up. They sound like that song you never catch the name of on the classic music station. They do all of that whilst striding confidently into a bright musical future. And if that isn’t the definition of an album destined to be regarded as a future classic, I don’t know what is!
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