Johnny Marr and The Healers
Boomslang
(New Voodoo)
Quitting the Smiths when the band was peaking made Johnny Marr a yardstick for just about everything we have since heard from the guitar. By polishing the riffs of the 1950s and 60s he set a template for the less elegant, more lucrative Stone Roses, Oasis, Blur and the like. So it's hard to criticise Marr if the first taste of Boomslang is heavy with Britpop - he's waited long enough to call in favours owed by that schtick.
Further listening shows that after 17 years of dabbling with Talking Heads, Beck, Billy Bragg, Bernard Sumner, Beth Orton, the Pet Shop Boys, the Pretenders and Neil Finn, the gig he should have stuck with was Matt Johnson's The The. Boomslang has the clean production he might have discovered through Johnson. It allows Marr to spread his guitar ideas, but also denies him the chance to conceal flaws.
Not for Johnny the Britpop trick of hiding behind fuzzy sound and attitude. Marr reminds us that the guitar is still a handy instrument in the studio. Like U2's The Edge, he hunts for fresh sounds, bringing them to life by rubbing a handful of simple notes together. None of these sounds dominate a song, they rarely even congeal into a riff. Marr is more interested in arranging them around the bass of Kula Shaker's Alonza Bevan and the drums of the son of Ringo Starr, Zak Starkey. Though sometimes flat, Boomslang offers a few clues on how to rebuild alternative music.
