First thing’s first – Adam West are a straight-up rock ‘n roll band. There’s nothing modern about their music, and more than anything they take influence from the likes of AC/DC, Motorhead and the mighty Zep. This is by no means a negative comment, as their music is filthy, gritty and bags of fun, standing head and shoulders above most of the cack music doing the rounds in 2006.
‘Longshot songs….’ Is a collection of B-sides and rarities released by the band. The third album of its kind, it lifts tracks from singles, compilations and as yet unreleased demos which means the assortment of songs included range from the good, to the bad to the downright dirty. ‘Thor’s Hammer’, ‘Christmas with the Devil’ and ‘You can’t stop rock ‘n’ roll’ display just how well Adam West are at imitating the sound of their influences. With gritty guitar lines and filthy vocals courtesy of frontman Jake Starr, listening to ‘Longshot Songs…’ makes you feel like you could very well be living in 1969 at the hey-day of heavy metal.
The weaker parts of the album lie within tracks such as ‘We’ve got cake’ and ‘Down in Flames‘, purely because they don’t rock as hard as the rest of the songs and end up feeling rushed. It’s almost expected in a B-side collection to have some sub-par songs, and Adam West luckily have fewer than most. The inclusion of live tracks ‘Have Love, Will Travel’ and ‘1970’ show that their stripped-down garage band sound translates exceedingly well into a live show. They rip through these tracks with so much energy, yet still sound as tight as any live band should. ‘1970’ especially stands out and the comparisons to the mighty ‘Ace of Spades’ are undeniably inevitable.
While Adam West may have been born collectively a few decades too late, they still manage to be the top of their game in the modern music scene. They crap all over the likes of The White Stripes, The Von Bondies and Wolfmother by simply making brilliant cock-rock songs, and deserve to have much greater coverage than they currently enjoy. If you’re into any of the rock bands from your parents’ generation, you owe it to yourself to get some Adam West into your CD player right now.
Andrew R