Shrunken Heads Astoria NY

Shrunken Heads

Ian Hunter

Yep Roc, 2007

http://www.ianhunter.com

REVIEW BY: Jason Warburg

ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED: 10/01/2007

Stones, schmones.

Everybody likes to hold the Rolling Stones up as some sort of amazing fountain of youth.  “Man, they’re in their sixties and they’re still huge!”  More accurate would be to say that they’re in their sixties and still milking the media machine like the pros they’ve become.  The Stones have been more about marketing than music for over half their career now.

Ian Hunter, by contrast, is of similar vintage to the Stones but just keeps getting better musically.  Well into his sixties he is in fact making some of the best music of his long and storied career.

Hunter’s early splash as frontman for legendary glam-rockers Mott The Hoople has been well-documented elsewhere.  What has been less-chronicled is his exemplary solo career, starting with 1975’s self-titled disc, through his 1979 commercial high-water mark You’re Never Alone With A Schizophrenic (remember “Cleveland Rocks”?) and all the way up through 2001’s stirring, sharp-as-ever Rant.