Mad Daddy: Mad Daddy – debut album reviewed

Album Review

Mad Daddy: Mad Daddy (Mad Daddy)

CD/DL/ Green Vinyl

8/10

Pre-order now  Released 23 April 2021

High-octane Punk Rock ‘n’ Roll Blues from the Isle of Man. A ten song powerhouse of a debut album. The wheel isn’t re-invented, but do you know why? Because it’s going too god-damn fast – says Ged Babey. 

Cue video …

… well, it’s that Times Ten!  Not that every-song-sounds-the-same, it’s just ten turbo-charged variations on a theme. A theme called rock’n’roll.

Probably the best all-energy, full-throttle punk rock’n’roll blues debut you will hear all year.

I introduced the world to Mad Daddy back in May 2020 and again in June and now every punk site and Vive Le Rock are raving about them.  Their appeal is instantaneous … or takes just five seconds MC5 style. They sound old-school but brand-new.

Mad Daddy have achieved everything they set out to with this album: – a pure punk rock’n’roll masterclass in the basics and the essence of the elemental excitement of raw rock’n’roll.  Songs about boredom, songs about lust, songs about driving too fast and drinking and druggin’ too much.

The Stooges and the Saints are the benchmarks and prototype from what I can hear despite the bands assertion that their influences are: old blues and rock n roll – John Lee Hooker, Slim Harpo, Howlin Wolf, Link Wray mixed with punk – Stooges, Ramones, Motorhead and all the good stuff in between. Oh and the Cramps of course (from whom they get their name.)

This kind of band come along every few years: Jon Spencers Blues Explosion, the Jim Jones Revue, Pussy Cat and The Dirty Johnsons … you know the kind. Traditional, with all the iconography yet a hell-for-leather attitude and kinetic energy that makes it fresh and new.

If a critic intent on finding fault with this album reviewed it there is plenty: the litany of sexism and cartoon misogyny in the songs: women are pretty ladies, hot babes, sweet honeys…. Give It To Me  is narrated by a tickin’ time bomb of lust…  Just You Wait (And See) concerns pursuit of a young girl. Ride With Me… and so on.

Mad Daddy employ every testosterone-soaked rock’n’roll cliche unapologetically, like Lemmy and Iggy before them. Their metaphorical cock swings like an alligators tail between their legs, then becomes a throbbin’ motorcycle or a torpedo they sit astride and finally a phallic guitar…  Is there a place for this kind of thing in 2021? Shouldn’t this filthy Rock and Roll be ‘cancelled’ instead of reignited?

Hell no! It’s just part-and-parcel of this kind of old-school, devils music called rock’n’roll.  As long as all concerned are fully aware it’s fantasy role-playing within a traditional feel for ‘authenticity’ of style, then it’s cool. It’s not reality. It’s an aesthetic. It is the music that counts: the words aren’t a rule-book as to how to live your life…. unless you wanna end up inside or six feet under.

I’m Bored, Ain’t Gonna Stop and Let’s Get Messed up are more the sheer hedonism of rock’n’roll captured in song. I know it’s bad for me but i aint gonna stop.

There are a couple true-life tales.

Having a quiff and Elvis shades in small-town Britain means you will get shouted at on the street. “Hey, Elvis!”  It sounds more like Hellvis when its sung.  A bassline that sounds like an earthquake on-horseback, guitar like lightning in a bottle and the singer hollerin’ about looking nothing like the King despite admitting to cool hair and ‘burns.

Real Bad Day is another highlight where the reality of having a shit-time is expunged by turning it into a riff-monster with honkin’ gob-iron. (Mouth organ).

Mad Daddy should’ve had a year of road-testing these songs – but based on the album they can’t get much faster and heavier and are a beer-sodden, sweat-soaked good-nights-rockin’ on disc.

What they lack in originality they make up for ten times over – and this is a perfect, dumb, authentically ass-kickin’ punk rock’n’blues explosion, coming straight out of the past, blasting into the future.

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All words by Ged Babey

Source: louderthanwar.com