Album Review: Sonny Vincent and Spite ‘Spiteful’: garage-punk supergroup blows the doors off with new album.
[rating=5]
What do you get when you mix members of The Stooges, The Damned, The Sex Pistols and The Testors together? If your answer is a badass punk rock supergroup, well that’s a given. But supergroups can often come on like too many cooks in a kitchen, where egos and endless jam sessions win out instead of great songs.
Luckily, Sonny Vincent and Spite over-deliver, with Spiteful: one of the most energetic rock albums I’ve heard in ages. Vincent (Testors) fronts the loud and rude quartet, which also features Sex Pistols bassist Glen Matlock, Damned drummer Rat Scabies, and Stooges saxophonist Steve Mackay. Their punk nucleus draws upon their formidable disparate musical histories through a blistering collection of songs. The album boasts 14 tracks, but they fly by in a 35 minute speed-fueled rage that would make the Ramones proud.
The album kicks off with Dog on The Subway, which feels like an anthem for middle-aged delinquents everywhere: ” I should’ve gone to school should’ve gone to church…should have listened good but I didn’t!” Mackay’s blistering sax careens wildly over the dystopian soundscape, while still giving space for Vincent’s soulful howl and primal riffage to shine amidst Scabies slamming beats and Matlock’s rattling bass.
Click here for my interview with Sonny Vincent
Most of the album follows in a similar vein, with blitzkrieg intensity on tracks like Bad Superstition and Macon. But there are also enough sonic departures to make this anything but a one-note release: Now That I Have You is a brief respite of chiming guitar and romantic longing, and Clouds is a shady, rain-soaked psychedelic dirge.
But it’s Sidewalk Cracks that brings all those disparate elements together, with a rumination of a public mental breakdown that veers from a lurching verse to a slamming chorus: “I’m sorry for the past/sorry for the crash/ and when he looks back the sidewalk cracks!” There is a glorious violence of sound, with a tactile texture of urban decay that’s wonderfully old-school.
I doubt there will be any punk-inflected releases in the near future that will hold a candle to Spiteful. It’s rude, and gritty, but sonically rich in analogue tones and strident musicianship. A rare and beautiful thing in this era of autotuned blandness.