DANKO JONES
We Sweat Blood (Bad Taste; CD)
     Not often you get an 'on spec' live performance by a band you've never heard before that's so devastating you trot straight to the merch-table afterwards and buy every recording you can lay your hot little hands on. In my experience, this has happened precisely twice, and the most significant of those two occasions was seeing Danko Jones at the Metro last year. Staggeringly good would be damning with faint praise. One of the best live acts I've ever seen, they're rare in actually sounding as in your face on record as they do on stage. This album shows they've got the framework down to a tee now: extremely tight power trio, playing songs built around a single riff and priapic lyric. Sort of like The Jam with nobs on and an electric current stuck up their collective pasty English backsides. And channelling the spirit of Bon Scott - there must have been some Scottish-Aussie inspiration behind a lyric like "Baby I want to put some mileage on your lovebike"…how can you sing that without guffawing, dammit?!? Musically it's very much in the same vein as 2002's Born A Lion: a bit of AC/DC, some obvious funk and soul foundations, a dash of early Aerosmith, vocals like Teddy Pendergrass on Viagra, but there's no particular "ah, yes, they sound like…" comparison to throw around. Appropriately enough, Danko Jones are big in (ooh-err) Sweden, though once again have been given only cursory attention from the UK press. Ignore the ton of second-raters that lot keep latching onto; this is way superior stuff.
Jane Farrell

THE HOT SHOTS 
Jubilee! (Sundazed; CD) 
     OK! It's let's-laugh-at-the-foreigners time with Sundazed newest release; a reissue of the Japanese trio's debut CD issued in 1997 on Blue Star 001 enhanced with two additional tracks. The group had a fairly high profile after snagging a huge local following and being caught up in the US swing craze of the late 1990s, but fuck knows why! Lead singer Chie Kodama's tuneless little-girl vocals are amateurish in the extreme and she seems to have learned all the lyrics phonetically, making a nonsense of many of the classic rock 'n' roll, pop and country songs she is rendering - or should that be "rending" (and, yes, perhaps I should try singing them in Japanese, but I wouldn't put the results out as a full-price CD!) - while the backing supplied by guitarist Yuichiro Matsushita and bass fiddle player Kenji Ohyama is likewise thin and ineffectual.
     The covers are all from the 1950s: Fats Domino's 'Whole Lotta Lovin'', Faron Young's 'Alone With You', Ruth Brown's 'Lucky Lips', Elvis' 'Treat Me Nice' and perhaps the most tragic, Buddy Holly's 'Love's Made A Fool Of You' and 'Everyday', the latter possibly the worst track on this, or any other CD I've ever heard! Better, but not much better, are the groups rockin' arrangements of 1950s MOR pop songs such as 'Temptation', 'Blue Moon' and 'I Get So Lonely' (AKA 'Oh Baby Mine'), while the best couple of minutes here are those given over to the jazzy instrumental 'Red Smoke' penned by Matsushita and featuring the guitar of leading West Coast producer Skip Heller.
     The Hot Shots also have a 1999 CD release on the Burbank-based Dionysus label which may be better than this...but I'm not risking my hard-earned; there are too many good neo-rockabilly bands out there to waste my wages on...
www.sundazed.com 
Dave Penny

MR AIRPLANE MAN
Moanin' (Sympathy For The Record Industry; CD)
MODEY LEMON
Thunder & Lightning (Birdman; CD)
     These arrived together in a package with an instruction to the postman (from our esteemed editor) that I'm surprised hadn't resulted in the CDs being snapped in half before they got to me…thank goodness my particular branch of the Royal Mail appreciates the spirit of rock 'n' roll, eh chums? (Editor: Harsh orders to posties prevent broken CDs). Both albums by the fashionable guitar/drums (and no bass, no siree!) skeleton line-up that seems to wang the kids' twang so much at the moment. Now, this kind of thing is HIGHLY difficult to pull off, but The White Stripes managed it, and Florida's awesome Nutrajet never let their lack of low end get in the way of greatness. Here, we have two different approaches to the bassless band. Mr Airplane Man go for the lo-fi blues thing, as you might expect from people who knock around with Greg 'Oblivians/Compulsive Gamblers/Reigning Sound' Cartwright (here co-mixing). Even the fact that one of them wears a Zen Guerrilla shirt wasn't enough to make me overly optimistic before slinging the thing in the player; but it's pretty good stuff. Played with gusto - especially the aggressive 'Commit A Crime' - songwriter Ms Garrett and her colleague Ms McManus must have been listening to predecessors such as the Billy Childish crowd (especially Thee Headcoatees), the CGs and the Shangri-Las. 'Very Bad Feeling' taps right into the melancholy frustration of having watched the man of your dreams gettin' close with some other chick whilst you watched helpless from the other side of the room (yeah, we've all been there…) Covers of Mississippi Fred McDowall and Howlin' Wolf too. So into the 'bass-free success' tray they go. 
     The Modey Lemon, however, may have to go in the other direction. How to account for why? Hmmm. I guess it's the 'all sound and fury, but no tunes' problem. Having heard good things about them from the usually extremely reliable www.therawk.com (check it out) it's kind of disappointing to have to relegate ML to run-of-the-mill status. But I can imagine too well being at one of their gigs and hearing all these songs - despite the energy with which they're played - blurring into an indistinct sticky mass because there's nothing to make any one stand out more than another. What a bummer. Still, if you don't have the songs, it's irrelevant whether you've got a bassist or not. 
Jane Farrell