Earl Slick is one of those artists you didn’t know you knew. The kind of name you’d recognise in a pub quiz if you hadn’t been drinking, but whose name you might forget well before the end of the night when you’ve had a couple. The reason? Earl Slick has teetered precariously at the fringes of genius for years now, having already played alongside David Bowie (with whom he’s now touring), John Lennon and even the great but sadly unrecognised Ian Hunter (of Mott The Hoople). It would, however, be a travesty to call Slick a ‘session-man’. Session men get a series of instructions and they stick to them. Slick gets a set of instructions, folds them up and rolls them into a joint of ‘piss-off’ proportions, handing it back to it’s source only when he’s smoked it down to the roach. And what’s more, people love him for it; people like David Bowie who writes and guests on the shuffling, spidery guitar psychedelia of ‘Isn’t It Evening (The Revolutionary), Robert Smith (The Cure) who writes and guests on the stoner and pulsive ‘Believe’ and Joe Elliott (Def Leppard) who rips up some rich jangling glam on the sizzling and hissing ‘Psycho Twang’. For most, if not all guests, it marks a robust return to form. For Elliott, in particular, it’s the best thing he’s done in years.
Other guests include Spacehog’s Royston Langdon and Martha Davis from The Motels. But even without the guests it’s a formidable enough record. Instrumental ‘1735’ hums and rattles like some icy blast from the fingers of Smiths guitarist Jonny Marr whilst ‘The Cat’ concocts a rich potion of jarring psychedelia and android giddiness.
It would be easy to single out the marvellous Bowie and Smith collaborations as highlights of this record but with equally strong contributions from a snarling and sassy Summer Rose on ‘Crunched’, Martha Davis on the wobbling and exotic string-fest ‘St Marks Place’ and the ‘Golden Years’ style sleaziness of Royston Langdon’s cracking take on title track ‘Zig Zag, you seriously have to consider other contenders.
An album that’s as sassy, surprising, abstract and glam as anything put out by Bowie and well worth a small investment despite its gross total of years on (and off) this planet.