Yahoo! Music Album Review

Released on 01/07/06
Label: Roadrunner

"Newly reformed" is one of those dread phrases to be filed next to "Morrissey endorsed" or "featuring Iggy Pop", practically a guarantee of musical mediocrity. So could any album be less daunting than "One Day It Will Please Us To Remember Even This", the first record in pop history to which all three phrases apply?

So thank God pop music constantly breaks its own rules, because - astonishingly - the New York Dolls' first record in thirty years is not only probably the best thing they've done, it's likely to end 2006 as the best full on, back to basics rock record of the year. Hear that sound in the distance? That's Bobby Gillespie chewing his left leg off in envy.

There's not enough room here to recap the whole of the Dolls' dysfunctional history, from cross-dressing proto-punks to drug-riddled failures. But it's probably fair to say they were more mythologised than listened to until Morrissey persuaded them to reform in 2004. But even in Morrissey's wildest dreams he couldn't have expected a new record as brash, confident and vital as this.

It opens with the juddering bass of "We're All In Love", which blows up into bruising rockabilly with washes of harmonica and knowing lyrics about "jumpin' round the stage like teenage girls." Its statement is resoundingly clear: we may be older, but we're still as brassy and trashy as ever. It's quickly followed by the whistling, rasping, bar brawling "Runnin' Around", the greatest Rolling Stones song released since, well, since the last New York Dolls album. Though both look tame next to the squalling, swaggering "Gimme Luv & Turn On The Light", a truly thrilling blast of bad attitude.

But there is also a world weariness here, fitting for a band who have seen three band members die. It's a weariness heard in the drained lament of "Plenty Of Music", or in the Badalamenti blues of "Maimed Happiness", with the key lyric "been to the doctor, he said 'not much I can do / You've got the human condition, boy, I feel sorry for you'". One can only imagine Morrissey's smirk upon hearing that.

Is it a perfect album? No, and the Dolls would probably be appalled if it was. It's messy, overlong and stubbornly old-fashioned, with a few songs like "Fishnets & Cigarettes" that slip from knowing to self parody. But it has fire in its belly and an admirable abandon and as a whirlwind tour of rock'n'roll decadence it makes, say, Jet look like the fey, foppish tourists they are. A triumph, all in all.

    by Jaime Gill