NOAH TAYLOR & THE SLOPPY BOYS – LIVE FREE OR DIE!
“There’s listening to music and playing music – like the difference between watching pornography and having sex. I need to make music…I carry my own amps. I tune my guitars. I don’t get paid … But it’s the thing I most love doing.” – with those words Noah Taylor certainly addresses the obvious actor turns musician question more effectively than most. The six-track Live Free or Die! release goes a little further. Alongside two Sloppy Boys – the Mess Hall’s Cec Condon and former Wreckery guitarist Ed Clayton-Jones – Taylor reveals a limited voice, but a rich if primeval lyrical bent. With strong nods to good friend Nick Cave and the raw power of Iggy Pop (and a touch of the Gareth Liddiard’s for good measure), Taylor adopts the rant and rave front-man style, letting the down and dirty swamp-blues rock rise and crash around him – the sort of improvised jam that the two week writing and recording time frame might suggest. Taylor has actually been playing music for fifteen years, so this is no novice project, and the skills of the Sloppy Boys do well to accentuate Taylor’s lyrical and dramatic strengths. Part porn, part sex.
*** 1/2
