Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating ****

For anyone, who in the last couple of years caught one of the original godfathers of modern music, Bruce Foxton, performing with Mark Brzezicki and Russell Hastings as part of the excellent From the Jam will point out, the man who put rock into roll is back and better than ever.

Back in the Room is Bruce Foxton’s brand new album and even if all the elements of the slower Jam records are there, it is the intelligence without the fuss, it is unmistakable and wonderfully the mighty Bruce. Back for another throw of the dice and with his two band mates from the re-modelled Jam giving him all the support he should require, Bruce Foxton brings his own particular look on life and with a gentle nod to the past with Paul Weller cropping up on a couple of the albums tracks and the heady mix of the perfectly timed drumming of Mark Brzezicki, the merging of Russell’s and Bruce’s vocal ranges throughout have made Back in the Room a very enjoyable album to listen to.

Although older fans may be disappointed that there isn’t the supposed initial deep rooted anger or stirring anthems of the past, for example Pretty Green, Down in the Tube Station at Midnight or Eton Rifles that would on the face it of it identify it as the man who inspired a generation and possibly scared the other. The voice and that tendency to play the bass guitar as if he was tenderly caressing a lover and yet at the same time berating her father for not hearing the new proclamations on the street is more than enough to continue to listen to the album time and time again.

The album may well have possibly been born out of the embers of the great gigs the three main men have played in the last few years that should not detract from songs such as the single Number Six, the excellence of The Gaffa and the oblivious serenity of Glad I Found My Tears.

It is good to have one of the true pioneers of rock and roll, one of the mod-fathers stirring up the emotions of new generation.

Ian D. Hall