There are always the rogue exceptions of course (did anyone say Von Bondies?) but as a rule artists hailing from Detroit seem to be born with a gene allowing only the purest rock'n'roll to course through their veins.
Just examine the evidence: Motown in all its' glory, the MC5, The Stooges, The White Stripes, The Dirtbombs, The Gories, The Soledad Brothers, The Detroit Cobras...the list goes on and believe me, your reviewer could bore the pants off you for hours bringing in all the evidence and far, far more besides.
But instead, he'll spare you the pleasure and instead wax lyrical about another great Detroit band with rock'n'roll stamped all the way through them like the best Blackpool rock. They are THE SIGHTS, they're signed to ex-Smashing Pumpkin James Iha's Scratchie label in the States and this, their eponymously-titled third album has been kicking around in the States for six months or so before finally touching down over here.
And, from the Led Zeppelin-meets-Doors crunch of Glam-my opener "Circus" it's immediately apparent The Sights are a wickedly good band. Yes, Jim Morrison's charges spring to mind on more than one occasion (not least because organist Bobby Emmett plays a mean left-handed keyboard bass a la Ray Manzarek), and few of the band's other reference points (Faces, Zep, Motown, first British invasion) come within grasping distance of 1975 let alone Punk, but when played with this much assurance and vitality it matters little. "The Sights" is simply a fine rock'n'roll album.
Highlights and raunchily guilty pleasures are all over the shop. The Sights are of course as happy as the proverbial porker in the shite when rocking out ( the fabulously immediate "Will I Be True?" with its' Motown-style strut and Eddie Baranek's leather-lunged Robert Plant vocals; the hipshakin' "Can't Stand You" with its' Stones-y swagger and wailing harmonica and the Detroit Cobras-style rave up of "Just Got Robbed"), but listen more attentively and you realise just how adept The Sights really are.
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Indeed, great as the rockers are, it's often when the band head off on more soulful pursuits that they really score. To this end, make for songs like the organ-led "Jealous Night", the infectious, Badfinger-style pop of "Backbeat" with its' jaywalking, blues-y electric piano and commanding Baranek vocals and "Scratch My Name In Sin", where Emmett's organ bleeds Southern soul and Baranek submits the mother of all gospel-tinged, Paul Rodgers-style vocals.
Elsewhere, Baranek breaks out the acoustic guitar to duel with Emmett's lovely, Ian Stewart-style piano and some gorgeous, wafting pedal steel on the country-tinged "Waiting On A Friend" and they keep a potent supply of drama in reserve for the closing "Good Way To Die", which sets the scene with some wonderfully jazzy, Roy Budd-style organ before gradually boiling up into a grandstanding, Crazy World Of Arthur Brown-style finale. Except it doesn't, as there's a hidden track - an apposite cover of Transatlantic ancestors The Faces' louche anthem "Stay With Me" - to send you off into the early hours reeking of stolen cologne and trailing IOUS as the dawn breaks.
So, spiritually at least, "The Sights" has little in common with a world that has since embraced everything from Punk to Hip-Hop and Acid House, not to mention the spectre of AIDS. It's a real, old-fashioned rock'n'roll record that wears its' heart on its' flares with pride, yet still has the energy, flash and style to piss all over retro-wankers like Jet this side of the New Millennium. Laugh all you like, but you'll never keep a good Detroit rock'n'roll band down, even in these supposedly enlightened times.
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