NEW ALBUMS

Ian Hunter: three chords, famous friends and the truth

RYAN SEBASTYAN

Defiance Part 2: Fiction SUN

7/10

Elder statesman puts the world to rights again, in esteemed company. By Peter Watts

FEW songwriters have written as many songs about rock’n’roll as Ian Hunter. With Mott The Hoople there were “All The Way From Memphis”, “One Of The Boys”, “Ballad Of Mott The Hoople” and “Saturday Gigs”, and the habit continued when he left the band in 1974.

Drop into almost any Hunter solo albums and there seems to be asong about music, from “I Get So Excited” on Ian Hunter to “Still Love Rock And Roll” on 2001’s Rant.

That’s true right up to the present day when partway through excellent new album Defiance Part 2: Fiction, Hunter, now 84, declares “This Ain’t Rock And Roll”.

The song is awhistlestop tour of musical history, set to aBo Diddley beat, that ends with alament more resigned than bitter. Music, or rock’n’roll, might not be quite the same, but it’s aworld that has served Hunter well. Defiance: Part 1came out exactly ayear ago, and the two albums are the result of afruitful writing splurge during Covid. Hunter generally writes at home in Connecticut on piano or guitar, then hands the songs to Andy York for further development. The tracks are then pinged around the planet to Hunter’s peers: on Defiance Part 2there are contributions from Lucinda Williams, Joe Elliott, Taylor Hawkins, Jeff Beck, Johnny Depp and Brian May, plus members of Cheap Trick and Stone Temple Pilots.

Yet nobody overshadows Hunter. His voice might not be as powerful as it was – “This Ain’t Rock And Roll” sees him push it to the throaty limit –but it still has range, control and versatility, while his phrasing is consistently imaginative. He is at his most Dylanesque on “What Would IDo Without You”, alove song that encourages Heartbreaker Benmont Tench to play an Al Kooper-style organ part. This more laidback voice is perfect for the gentle waltz of “The Third Rail”, one of the last songs that Jeff Beck recorded before his death. Johnny Depp also plays guitar on the song, and painted the picture on the cover.

One reason Hunter wanted Defiance Part 2: Fiction to come out so soon after its predecessor was the presence of afew political songs on the album. With America facing an angry, potentially calamitous election, Hunter felt songs like “Fiction” and “People” needed to come out before the fact. “People”, with Joe Elliott on backing vocals and Mott’s Morgan Fisher on organ, takes aim at the power of the media – “the gospel according to whatever channel you are listening to” –while the title track similarly attacks those who present fiction as fact. It’s afabulous song, with Dylan collaborator David Mansfield contributing a superb string arrangement that, not coincidentally surely, nods at the Succession theme.