The Quireboys - Homewreckers & Heartbreakers

It’s been four years since the Quireboys’ last studio album ‘Well Oiled’ but the guys have been far from idle.  Fed up with poor management and label disinterest, they’ve spent the time involved in lengthy negotiations to establish a more agreeable situation.  In the process they decided to press on with recording an album and pay for it themselves.  The result is ‘Homewreckers and Heartbreakers’, in my opinion the most well rounded effort since 1990’s ‘A Bit of What You Fancy’ and by far the most mature.  To show how good their new management is, it was even on the “Recommended” stand at HMV during the first two weeks of release and news from across Europe is that it's been selling out in days.   

Since ‘Well Oiled’ they’ve made greater use of additional instruments including brass, fiddle, pedal steel guitar and melotron. There is also stunning backing vocal contribution from Cherry Lee Mewis.  The established writing partnership of Spike Gray and Guy Griffin is now a triumvirate with increasingly significant contributions from Paul Guerin who has worked with the likes of Michael Schenker, Dan Baird and Joe Walsh.  The wealth of experience and sheer good taste he brings to the table are amply demonstrated on ‘One For the Road’ with its saloon bonhomie and ‘Take a Look at Yourself,’ which, as Paul puts it, “had a kind of Al Green thing to it” with the brass section adding a soulful contrast to the rest of the album.  

As soon as you hear the opening bars of ‘I Love This Dirty Town’ you realise that nobody else but the Quireboys could possibly sound like this.  The riff is driven along by the bar room boogie woogie of Belfast man Keith Weir with his flat cap, huge grin and pint of Guinness within easy reach, and the first time you hear the chorus it’s like an old friend who runs into your arms not only delighted to see you, but is also up for buying the first round!  The first single ‘Mona Lisa Smiled’ with its blend of violin and mandolin could easily be their ‘Maggie May’ and brings back warm memories of when I first played ‘Every Picture Tells A Story’. 

If ‘Louder’ has you dancing around like a grinning loon, ‘Fear Within the Lie’ drops you into the last bar of the evening; it’s closing time, you’ve smoked your last cigarette and there’s nothing but a dribble of ice water left at the bottom of your glass of Jack Daniels. Speaking of which, ‘Black Water’ slides itself out of the speakers and into the very delta of your consciousness!   It’s a seven minute ode to the irony that is the dry county of Lynchburg, Tennessee, the place where Uncle Jack first perfected his legendary charcoal filtering process.  ‘Late Night Saturday Call’ has all the detached emotional loneliness of a Tom Waits composition while the slide guitar on ‘Pain of Shame’ is almost an homage to Ronnie Wood; a perfect meeting of the Stones and the Faces. Josephine could be straight out of the Georgia Satellites songbook, surely played on a Telecaster with an unprocessed sound, tube amp and the gain way up!  



With such a strong and varied set of songs, I can’t quite understand the one and a half minute reprise of ‘Louder’, but no doubt there was some logical reason for including it.  If you like your rock’n’roll to be a cool blend of the Stones with a dash of Black Crowes, and a measure of Georgia Satellites topped off with whiskey soaked vocals akin to The Faces before Rod Stewart sold his soul then this is the brew to wet your whistle.   The umbrella in this musical cocktail is provided in the story behind the artwork.  For that, you’ll just have to read the interview with Paul Guerin.  This is not metal, this is not AOR, this is not sleaze/glam, this is exactly what the Quireboys told you it was two albums ago.  This is Rock ‘n’ Roll!!