Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10
The commotion of excitement is always palpable; sometimes though you must actively ask the question to which the other person in your vicinity might cut down the animation you feel and display agitation and coldness to the familiar…the response will not fit your enthusiasm, but it will inspire something deep down in your poetic soul and create art, create a new world driven from the negative pressure once felt to the beauty of positivity.
The back story that inspires Dean Johnson’s long awaited new album is one of legendary proportions, the Birmingham born Mott The Hoople favourite Pete ‘Overend’ Watts taking centre stage as the anecdote of their meeting by accident or even serendipity in Hereford in 2002 thrills even before the first track leans into the listener and whispers sweet promises of an album to come.
Hoopla is a tribute and a sense of wonderful nostalgia given life, and as new and tracks such as Song For Carrie, the excellent Slapstick Days, Burnin’ The Stubble, Old Man On The Stage, and the observing Scratched Records, Dean Johnson marries together the questioning with the respectful attitude that expresses just how fortunate you can be at times to bump into the one person who can change your life, at least inspire art long after the meeting.
Mott The Hoople may not be a name that looms large in the younger end of musical appreciators today but regardless of that it should be noted just how incredible they were, and when you can count the Thin White Duke of David Bowie as a fan it only enhances the joy of their music, so we look to Dean Johnson to carry on the effect of that timeless reverie, and he succeeds with abundance, an occupation of affection coming through every song on the album and one that seems looking back one that was destined to be as it fermented the exquisite nature of his own writing and profound playing.
Dean Johnson’s return is one of fantastic timing, an unmistakable talent that always finds pleasure in the motion of regaling the listener with a song of an enquiring mind, and one that you cannot ignore.
Dean Johnson will release Hoopla on February 14th 2025.
Ian D. Hall