Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 8.5/10
To find the moment in Time when a movement started, you must have been prepared to have found the Time to listen in the first place; revolutions don’t just spring up overnight, they don’t appear randomly with no forward planning, they are dreams that can decades to come into fruition.
The Citizens Of Boomtown know this, they felt the first stirrings in a small Black Country town caught between Birmingham and Wolverhampton one August night in 2008, the first shots fired, the call to the fans of The Boomtown Rats that the music that once was the signature tune of a generation had returned, albeit with only two of the generals on stage at The Robin 2 in Bilston, but nevertheless a call to arms that could not have been more appropriate.
The years between 2008 and the From The Rats gig in Bilston have been one of steady growth, a set of well-received tours, of excellent nights in the company of Pete Briquette, Garry Roberts, Simon Crowe and Bob Geldof, but the stirrings in the audience wanted more, something new to set the stamp on the return and Citizens Of Boomtown, the fans get that new memory, same old fierce integrity, but one that has got a different edge to it, startingly familiar and yet outrageously new and exciting, and with the poised coil of cool that is Darren Beale playing on the album, and with Alan Dunne and Paul Cuddeford appearing with gravitas, the moment that we seek is one that is highlighted with a broad grin and the depth of anger still felt by one of Ireland’s all time bands.
From Trash Glam Baby through songs such as She Said No, Here’s A Postcard, Rock ‘n’ Roll Ye Ye and the final chant, the exquisite rejoinder which unloads like a Banshee riding a well-oiled Harley Davidson across the moors, The Boomtown Rats, the effort, the class and the patience of Time shine, and for the four remaining members of the band, the Citizens Of Boomtown have surely rejoiced in their appreciation of what is arguably a tremendous studio rebirth.
Time has been heard calling once more, a few decades down the line, it is Time once more to do The Rat.
Ian D. Hall