aaamusic | On 02, Oct 2011

Known for that ubiquitous Christmas song, daft outfits and probably little else to most, Slade are one of those bands many wonder about and few investigate, myself included. So colour me surprised at just how… rock Slade can actually be, with this remastered edition of ‘Sladest’.

‘Cum On Feel The Noize’ is like the pop junkie’s answer to Tigertailz, with much the same party attitude, and the mastering job is indeed crisp and clean, emphasising every single note, lifting the guitars, teasing out the agile playful bassline and bringing out the utterly mad vocals into disconcerting crystalline focus. ‘Look Wot You Dun’ is a thumping barroom roots style rock song in the vein of The Faces, albeit with an almost oom-pa musical twist in the bass end of things. However, here the percussion gets boosted a little too much, until I can’t tell whether the noise is poppy handclaps or an obnoxious Morris dancing mob with tap shoes. Again, the remastering is perhaps too overdone on the already speaker-bending racket of ‘Skweeze Me, Pleeze Me’, with its distorted howling vocals and tumultuous rock that sounds like a Who tribute act after too many pints. At first, you can go along with the turbo-boosted sound, but then it quickly grows headache-inducing for no readily identifiable reason other than a kind of general chaos in the band’s sound that the retouches just bring out a little too much.

Thankfully, there are oases of tasteless enjoyment to be had: ‘Pouk Hill’ is a borderline psychedelic affair that stomps comically through a clown’s interpretation of Pink Floyd. ‘The Shape Of Things To Come’ flys a pseudo-Who standard with a heady sense of the ridiculous still at heart, in tuneless yet enjoyable vocals and some rather good rock guitarwork. Boogieing on through ‘Gudbuy T’Jane’ with its enjoyable, breezy pop style musicality, we have the rock n roll stylings of ‘One Way Hotel’, which is the highway blues unfolding in a British seaside resort, twinned with the disco pounding bluesy number ‘Take Me Bak ‘Ome’, which injects a bit of dusty soul into the proceedings.

‘Wild Winds Are Blowin’’ has a Hendrix-esque veneer to it, stitched to the corpse of The Beatles’ pop moments, but it fails to really go anywhere, ditto with the bewildering gang vocal affair that is ‘Know Who You Are’.

The raucous vibe of ‘Get Down And Get With It’ lifts the mood, but by now I feel a bit lost, like I’ve walked into someone else’s party. Yes, the mood is great, with a grooving keyboard and cheeky pre-cha cha slide dance directions, but this is definitely someone else’s night here. Then, I am listening to someone else’s hangover with ‘Look At Last Night’.

 

In conclusion, I can really see why Slade are for all intents and purposes a bit immortal in their own right: the cacophony they make is in small doses the perfect thing for a rock n roll party just as much as it is for a very British take on a night on the tiles. However, this glammed-up roots madness doesn’t really translate in bulk down the generations, and the remastering job here gets a bit too much sometimes, and overwhelms the unaccustomed with a sonic bloody-mindedness that while is probably part of the band’s appeal, doesn’t sit too well after an hour. If you like Slade, you’ll love this, but I’m not convinced this will win a new fanbase.

 

Author: Katie H-Halinski