AC/DC Highway To Hell
(Epic)
How
has it come to pass that AC/DC have managed to make a virtue of their, uh,
uncomplicatedness, whereas Status Quo have moulded their resistance to evolution
into a kind of knowing joke? Whatever the reason, for about four minutes (pretty
much the duration of its opening title track) “Highway To Hell” is deliriously
exhilarating. If you were ever charged on pain of death to explain rock music to
some visiting Martian, it wouldn’t be the shabbiest way to get your point
across.
For me, the album also
offers the added interest of reverse engineering the rearrangements made to some
of its songs by Red House Painters/Sun Kil Moon mainstay Mark Kozelek on his
album of acoustic AC/DC covers “What’s Next To The Moon”. There, he located the
sepia-toned vulnerability at the heart of, er, “Walk All Over You”, “If You Want
Blood (You’ve Got It)” and “Love Hungry Man”, in the process rendering them
completely unrecognisable. Really, on hearing the originals for the first time,
I’d be long past the chorus before realising what I was listening to.
“Beating Around The Bush”
sounds a little too redolent of Aerosmith’s “Rats In The Cellar” – see what
happens when they venture outside the comfort zone? Similarly the welcome
variety introduced by the wailing blues of “Night Prowler” is poisoned by its
controversial lyrics; the song was said to be a favourite of American serial
killer Richard “Night Stalker” Ramirez. Still, there’s something strangely
exciting about “If You Want Blood (You’ve Got It)”, all hopped up on
testosterone as it is.
I can’t complain about the
album’s current vinyl incarnation, though, all 180 appropriately gutsy, thumpy
grams of it.