REVIEW

Johnny Marr — Call The Comet

(New Voodoo/Warner Bros) ★★★✩✩

THERE’S no question that Johnny Marr is part of the Bloke Rock establishment now. Yet the former Smiths guitarist has never joined his peers in producing outright stodge.

Billed as a concept piece set in the near future, Call The Comet sounds more like something out of the near past, built upon, rather than merely replicating, that chiming, muscular, surging style of indie-rock we’ve heard so much this century.

It’s seldom been done with more assurance than on the opening, Killers-ish Rise, or the streamlined, motorik-driven My Eternal.

If all Bloke Rock had Call The Comet’s vigour, this bloke would be much happier with it.