Graham Parker

On his first album, Graham Parker draws unabashedly from some of the most powerful
stylistic devices of Van Morrison, Bruce Springsteen and Bob Dylan. While he sometimes
goes too far, Parker is justified time and again by the Rumour's exciting approach. Led by
veteran pub rocker Brinsley Schwarz, the group includes Bob Andrews, keyboard player
in the group which bore Schwarz's name, and guitarist Martin Belmont of the late... More >

Parker builds his white r&b of such familiar materials that it takes awhile for the songs to sort themselves out, but their fury is unmistakable--in the time-honored English manner, bass and drums play the house-rocking rhythms of Chicago and Detroit for righteous anger rather than good-time escape. Then songs come clear, marred at times by the white bluesman's chronic romanticism of the blood--"Gypsy Blood," to be precise--but so passionate that every personal animus takes dead aim at the great world. Parker's "strange religion/Without any God" may well be himself. But when he instructs the Lord not to ask him questions, he doesn't extend the prohibition to Graham Parker. (Grade: A)