Wilko Johnson - Blow Your Mind (2018)

‘Blow Your Mind’ is Wilko’s first album of new material in 30 years, and is the sound of a man feeling very much alive.

Joining Wilko on the album are his long-standing band; Norman Watt Roy on bass and Dylan Howe on drums along with producer Dave Eringa who worked with them on the gold-selling album ‘Going Back Home’ with Roger Daltrey. Describing the record as ‘The album I never thought I’d get to write’ it deals with the trials and tribulations that he faced in the last five years, songs such as Marijuana and Take It Easy deal very directly with the terminal diagnosis he was given.

Speaking about the first sets of lyrics that he’d written in three decades Wilko says “It’s tricky when you get to seventy years old, because what am I supposed to be singing? “I love you, baby, but you done me wrong?” Come on! That’s kind of a problem. But I never thought that I’d be the sort of person to write songs about different sorts of real-life experiences until I got sick”.

Anyone expecting that Wilko’s particular brand of R&B to be softened by such heartfelt lyrics is in for a surprise, if anything his guitar style of ‘the chop’ as he calls it, is even more aggressive. The introspection of some of the tracks on the album is more than balanced out by the good time upbeat party feel of the title track, Beauty and I Love The Way You Do that have the urgency of Wilko’s earliest work with Dr Feelgood.