Description

2016 reissue on black vinyl

Angry Anderson and Co.s fourth studio album Southern Stars, including the Australian hit single I Wish, finds the band moving in a more AOR style. As most great rock n roll bands sooner or later face a continual dilemma. You can either make another great rock n roll album, which sounds exactly like the last, or you can try something different. If you try something different, you may scale new heights as ZZ top did with Duguello, or you may fall flat on your face as Blackfoot did with Vertical Smiles. Rose Tattoo didn’t go completely base over apex with Southern Stars but they certainly stumbled heavily. The singing and playing are basically as good as ever but significantly the raw barroom power of the first three albums is completely missing. The production is polite and sophisticated (two words that dont belong in a Rose Tattoo review) and some of the guitar licks wouldn’t be completely out of place on a Rush outtake. At times the brash and peculiarly Australian machismo which had previously typified Rose Tattoo threatens to breakthrough but its’ regularly subsumed by what comes across as an attempt to make AC/DC sound attractive to Boston fans.

Track list:
1. Southern Stars
2. Let Us Live
3. Freedoms Flame
4. I Wish
5. Saturday’s Rage
6. Death Or Glory
7. The Pirates Song
8. You’ve Been Told
9. No Secrets
10. The Radio Said Rock N Roll Is Dead