(Continuing the review re-runs, while I do other stuff…)
BUCKCHERRY – “Lit Up”
Don’t don’t do it: my hunch is that more great music has been made on cocaine than on any other pop star drug. Certainly the 90s had a bad time of it, with mediocrities under the influence turning into, well, louder mediocrities, but that doesn’t diminish the sheen and decadence of late-70s urban disco, or the murk of solipsism and paranoia that turns Bowie’s Station To Station into a choppy, compelling avant-funk masterpiece. Buckcherry probably don’t stay awake at night pondering such questions, but they almost certainly do stay awake at night, if you see what I mean: to say “Lit Up” endorses drugs would be like saying the Pope endorses prayer. The music is overdriven glam-metal swagger, of course (they pronounce it “coh-caayuhn”, bless ’em): like most styles which embraced the ridiculous from the start, it can never sound knowing or dated. That isn’t to say Buckcherry are any good, but they’d fall nicely into the “sucks with energy” category, which is a great deal more than you can say about their powder-fuelled British counterparts.