DIRTY TRICKS
Album: Night Man
"Circus" Magazine, January - Article by Karel S. James
Dirty Tricks
Night Man
(Polydor)
From the first fluttering guitar crescendo crowned with a gusty scream, Night Man announces the unmistakeable entrance of Dirty Tricks into the heavy metal arena. Comprised of four skilled and drilled musicians who learned the rock´n´roll ropes in the street-clubs of London, Scotland and Australia, Dirty Tricks – while not an original band – presents the best recapitulation to date of the stylized elements which have made British rock a generic term. Yet Kenny Steward´s reedy Winwood vocals, Johnny Fraser-Binnie´s guitar a la Paige/Townshend and Lord-ly keyboards, Terry Horbury´s Cornick cum Bruce bass lines and John Lee´s Monnmastery of his drum kit equate to far more than a computer print-out of traditional riffs, rhythms and rhetorical riddles. This band has an energy that makes even the tired chord progressions of “Wait Till Saturday” glow, vibrate and explode with new vitality.
There is nothing pretty about this album, which is a combination of cuts from the group´s first two LPs released in Britain. It has instead an elecrtifying oppressiveness (“Armageddon”) and a scaring, conscience-penetrating social commensary (“Night Man”). It´s lyrical content (when discernable) is the belligerant cry of frustration channeled to the discovery of a highway leading from the wet, and the bleak and the sordid. The guitars, keyboards and percussion vivify and punctuate the strident emotionalism ignited by the lyrics to create an echoing whirlpool of high tension and surging humanity.
Night Man is a powerful album from a group possessing not only superior technical ability and relentless intensity, but a sense of humor as well. After all, it´s a pretty Dirty Trick to disprove the currently fashionable theory that heavy metal British rock is dead.
