MUSIC REVIEW: SUZI QUATRO – NO CONTROL

Shane | 7 May 2019 | Reply

MUSIC REVIEW: SUZI QUATRO – NO CONTROL
SPV/Steamhammer, March 2019
Reviewed by Shane Pinnegar
90%

There’s not a lot that Suzi Quatro hasn’t done (and done well) in her staggeringly influential fifty-something-year career: Rockstar, popstar, actress, sex symbol, outspoken feminist icon, author – hell, she’s even quit and it wouldn’t take, so she’s back touring and making sensational records.

One thing she’s never done – until now – is make an album with her son Richard Tuckey, and No Control (her first since 2016’s vastly underrated QSP album with Andy Scott and Don Powell) is a doozy, drawing on her incredible ouvre and taking her in new directions as well.

Tuckey’s influence is subtle – you can’t get much closer to a person than your own flesh and blood, and his influence helps her make this one of her best efforts in decades.

The album is prime Quatro – Macho Man, Easy Pickings and Don’t Do Me Wrong have soul and groove pulsating through them alongside the rock n’ roll. Let’s face it – she’s always been fearless in thinking outside of the rock n’ roll box. Opener No Soul/No Control features the life-affirming lyric “Don’t let go of yourself for anyone,” and there’s few messages as powerful and important to us all than that.

I Can Teach You To Fly features a heavy Beatles influence and a gloriously sunny demeanour, while Strings is a left of centre sidestep for an artist so experienced she shouldn’t even be thinking so far out of the box. Thank goodness she is, it’s a great track.

Let’s not ignore the blues grooves on show here: Going Home and Going Down Blues have all the schwing and schwang of the old masters, the former boasting almost a Bo Diddley feel and the latter a great reverential stomp.

No Control isn’t just the new album from Suzi Quatro, it’s a high point of a stunning career made by someone who has no reason to keep making music other than the sheer, unbridled love of it. It shows.