Album Review
By Henry Lipput
If Hurricane #1 sounds a bit like the Britpop bands of the 90s, it’s because they were around back then too. Their new album, Find What You Love and Let It Kill You, the first in 16 years, has just been released.
The band released two albums: Hurricane #1 in 1997 and Only The Strongest Will Survive in 1999. At their peak, they had seven top 40 hits and both of their albums went top 20 in England. They appeared on British music shows like Top Of The Pops and TFI Fridays and also -- more impressively -- performed at the fabled Glastonbury Festival. The band broke up after the second album when guitarist Andy Bell (formerly with the shoegazing legends Ride) left and joined the past-its-prime Oasis. Vocalist / guitarist Alex Lowe kept going. His most recent solo album was recorded under the name Gun Club Cemetery and came out last year. The new line-up for Hurricane #1 includes a revitalized Lowe, Brazilian brothers Carlo and Lucas Mariani on guitar and bass, and Chris Campbell on drums.
Lowe spent some time in the hospital while he was receiving treatment for a cancer diagnosis and rather than, in his words, “wallow in it and feel sorry for yourself,” he wrote the songs for this album. And the best songs on the new album like “Think Of The Sunshine, “Has It Begun (Imitating Life),” and “Round In Circles” are upbeat numbers that don’t reflect the dire circumstance Lowe faced at the time.
“Think Of The Sunshine” is a great pop song that owes a little to Kimberly Rew’s “Walking On Sunshine.” It’s well-played and well-produced and borders on dancing-around-the-living-room territory. No wonder it’s the first single from the album. It also has a terrific Indian-influenced, trippy coda with a backwards guitar played by former bandmate Bell.
“Has It Begun (Imitating Life)” is a wonderful song with horns that add another color to Lowe’s musical palette, and it contains a distinctive guitar sound that recalls the solo work of George Harrison.
Lowe said that he listened to Teenage Fanclub and, of course, The Beatles, when he was in the hospital; but it seems as if The Byrds have also been a major influence in his writing. “Round In Circles” is a marvelous acoustic number that could have had a place on an early Byrds album (It’s a song that Gene Clark never wrote.). “Coyote Ahoy” has a lovely tune and would make a great pairing with The Byrds “Chestnut Mare” on someone’s playlist, and “Heathen Mother“ has a Roger McGuinn-like vocal and some nifty guitar work.
With Blur having released a new album that looks as if it’s a one-off, one of the Gallaghers flying high with the birds and the other looking around with a seemingly dormant beady eye, it’s Hurricane #1 that’s back in business. And it’s about time.
Hurricane #1’s new album Find What You Love and Let It Kill You is out now on Tapete Records.
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