Artist: Nazareth
Label: Ear Music Records
Release: 2011
Length: 55:39
Rating: 4/5
Nazareth! A name that always stirs up powerful feelings! Legendary rock’n roll highlanders from the Scottish Highlands! How great is it that they’re putting out albums again! Even the comeback record “The Newz” (2008) proved that the band still hasn’t forgotten how to handle things when it’s time to grab the devil by the horns and gently, meekly lay him on the ground, like tucking a baby into a cradle.
Even with Manny Charlton no longer in the lineup, and even with Dan McCafferty’s once extremely wide vocal range having narrowed a bit over the years – a feverishly screeching male version of Janis Joplin, so to speak – Nazareth have kept their recognizable, one-of-a-kind charm in the new era too. It’s the same charm that, in the first half of the seventies, through the albums “Loud N’ Proud”, “Razamanaz”, “Rampant” and “Hair Of The Dog”, wrote them into the books among the immortal names of the greatest rock acts and its historic legacy on the face of the earth.
The band has been working for quite a while in a lineup that, besides veterans Pete Agnew and Dan McCafferty, also includes Pete’s son, drummer Lee Agnew, and guitarist Jimmi Murrison. So it was a bit surprising that there hadn’t been a single album from them for so long. Luckily, “The Newz” from 2008 successfully broke that long dry spell. The time in between evidently did the band good, growing the bonds between them to the point where Jimi Murrison’s integration worked out perfectly. In that period the man has truly managed to fill Charlton’s big shoes, and on the new album he proves for the second time that he has mastered every basic trait of the undisputed greatness of Nazareth rock.
“Big Dogz” keeps up the tradition of forging a scorching, raw display of rock soaked in blues rhetoric, ruled by the unmistakably “sandpapery” sheen of Dan MaCafferty’s one-of-a-kind vocal delivery. So. Put the blues in the center, add a few melodic, classically fluid rock n’ roll trimmings left and right, throw in Dan’s lawnmower-engine vocals, then crank the guitars properly, back the atmosphere up with backing vocals and top it off with a bizarrely simple “honky tonk” dab of piano.
Nazareth keep their reputation for pumping out an exceptionally sturdy, rock-solid rhythm tandem, and this time, for the second time, it’s with father and son at the controls. Lee’s drums in places flat-out blast away like cannons, in the deep, booming way the studio’s capture of the drum-skin reverb demands. The bass guitar literally tears along with its relentless rattling, firming up the seductively coquettish march of the songs’ rhythmic undercarriage. Elusively Nazareth-esque!
The songs are a blend of Nazareth rock potency through which the blues rock legacy shines. Sometimes more, sometimes less. In varying doses. Scottish style. The exceedingly dark When Jesus Comes To Save The World Again leads the way in this absolutely, on the new album. It’s the darkest song on the record, where Dan McCafferty’s finely honed knack for bringing out the emotion in a song really comes through. Claimed is the first song to combine that coquettish rhythm with that unmistakable, sarcastically cynical Nazareth approach to rock n’ roll. The boys stick to preaching in verses that never quit going after women and endless partying, and of course a good chunk of it goes to the personal, confessional note, where Nazareth age like fine wine.
If you were looking for the album’s most direct link between today’s Nazareth lineup and the band’s golden seventies days, we can say flat out that the song Radio, the album’s standout moment, undeniably earns that honor. It would be the perfect opener for gigs on the “Big Dogz” tour. Riding right alongside it on equal footing is the already mentioned Claimed, plus an incredibly strong finish to the album with the superb ballad Butterfly and, right after it, the cheeky rock n’ roll scamp Sleeptalker.
These guys are crafty. They know where, when and how to “dose” an album, which is why “Big Dogz” is such a dynamic, vivid record. It’s the little secrets of great “cooking” masters that make the difference, like the sequence of Big Dogz Gonna Howl and Claimed. The transition from one song to the other – the end of one, the pause in between and the start of the next – creates the effect that the beginning of Claimed is really a continuation of Big Dogz Gonna Howl. The start of Claimed does feel like Big Dogz Gonna Howl is carrying on, with a new, unbelievably juicy and compatible motif that lays out a fresh mood within the same song, even though it actually isn’t.
We can’t get around the fact that Manny Charlton can never be effectively replaced, but on the other hand Jimmi Murrison has proven for the second time, with some sparkling guitar work that combines exactly what Nazareth need – a simple, punchy rock n’ roll riff that smacks you dumbstruck in the forehead from the first listen, with juicily soured guitar solos – that in the new era he’s the first true Nazareth choice! Hats off to the man.
With the new album, Nazareth have confirmed that a fresh creative hunger is surging unstoppably through their veins, and thankfully it hasn’t let up since “The Newz”. “Big Dogz” confirms the reborn rock n’ roll face of a rejuvenated Nazareth. This is an album that, after “The Newz”, keeps right on wearing a fresh face, stuffed with first-class rock magic of the kind only Nazareth can conjure. So we can say it’s a worthy successor to the legacy of everything the band has been in the different periods of its existence. With this renewed creative drive, we don’t have to worry that more releases won’t follow this one down the road! May the spotlight on the letter “Z” in the titles of “Naz” albums keep going, unshaken!
Lineup
Dan McCafferty – vocals
Jimmy Murrison – guitar
Pete Agnew – bass, backing vocals
Lee Agnew – drums
Production
Nazareth
Tracklist
1.Big Dog’s Gonna Howl (3:58)
2.Claimed (3:55)
3.No Mean Monster (5:01)
4.When Jesus Comes To Save The World Again (6:24)
5.Radio (4:17)
6.Time And Tide (7:20)
7.Lifeboat (4:58)
8.The Toast (3:59)
9.Watch Your Back (4:32)
10.Butterfly (5:30)
11.Sleeptalker (5:45)
