Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 8.5/10
Paradise is only as nice as what you allow it to be; if your demeanour is set to the point of black thunderous skies and the spark of lightning rampaging overhead as if millions of gas bottles have been struck by a solitary match, then the thought of paradise is pretty bleak. However Paradise is redemption, it only takes a change of mood, a change of thought and deed and suddenly what has been ailing you turns against the tide and can be a place where blue heavens and sunshine cast no shadows.
For Mick Rhodes & The Hard Eight glory comes in the form of Paradise City, a place where all things and songs are welcome, no matter the subject, no question to the issues explored, the music is everything and it is one of sheer delight, the fringes of enthusiastic bliss on offer and the signpost that looms before you urges you welcome.
It may have been a long time coming for the band to follow up their superb Till I Am Dust album, however time is relative when fighting the world, when things of importance get in the way of performance; it is just a fact of life that at times life must come first, it just makes the ecstasy of what is to come just that little bit more pleasurable and endearing.
The pulse of the songs are not just measured and off beat, they sink into the soul without the listener even realising it, that they don’t know that they have been infected with a groovy musical virus is telling because even one song in, the foot is undergoing its own beat, its own stamp of reflective joy and soon the tingle spreads.
Tracks such as Last Summer, Don’t Remind Me, Under The Bustle, the superb and heart thumping cool Whisky Girl and Heavy Metal Heyday, all make the album sing with proud ambition. Paradise is only as nice as you make it, if that is the case Mick Rhodes & The Hard Eight have spent the intervening years making sure that Paradise is a place you can call home for a while, where all that you could crave is at your command.
An album of sweat banging groove, of endearing lyrics and one that you could fancy to take on anybody’s favourite album and come out with self-respect held high.
Ian D. Hall