“With my great big amp I will rule the world,” he croaks, and being Wayne Kramer?the man who put the kick in Kick Out The Jams and the cocaine-dealing martyr canonised in The Clash’s “Jail Guitar Doors”?he means it. Marching to a power-stodge two-step similar to Neil Young’s sublime Mirror Ball, Adult World is as thick on sincere, sharp songwriting as it is on squealing licks. Alongside the politically-charged “Love, Fidel” and “Sundays In Saigon”, Kramer’s beatnik-jazz diversion “Nelson Algren Stopped By” is a riveting surprise.
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