Because the Fun Lovin’ Criminals never meant Bo Diddley in their home country, the band have always been at the whims of the British and Irish record-buying public, notoriously more fickle than America, where the sheer size of the land mass and populace means it takes longer to make a man as well as break one.
The trio got special dispensation in the Britpop aftershocks of the late '90s, their hybrid of old-school stoner blues-rock, white rap, lounge and whatever-you’re-Havana-yourself bringing flavour and humour to the party.
Come the millennial hangover though, a whole lotta pop pickers woke up with a reddening sense of mortification over who they’d spent the night with, muttering snide remarks about pretend gangstas.
Which is kind of a hollow jibe when you consider Pacino and De Niro cut their teeth in the actor’s studio rather than running errands for Sicilian cartels. People seemed aggrieved when they twigged Huey was playing personae in tunes like ‘King Of New York’ (presaging his scene-stealing cameo in Shimmy Marcus’s Headrush) rather than drawing on some secret past in a witness protection programme.
But the public don’t always like their pop stars to play dress-up, as though you have to get shot nine times in the gut before you can make a legit hip-hop record, or OD on heroin before your complaint-rock anthem enters the canon.
Still, if the time when all the wide boys and good time Groucho girls wanted to be Huey’s drinking buddy have passed, Morgan wasn’t born sucking on a trust fund teat. Livin’ In The City sees him older, wiser and in a more clear-eyed state of mind, walking his dog through the mean streets of what was once a naked city, now a yuppie necropolis (“My heart is filled with pain/New York City just ain’t the same” – 'The Preacher’).
Sure, there are still sporadic fits of cartoon aggro. The title tune is a rambunctious collision of white trash (Lynyrd Skynyrd slide breaks, hoodlum mob choruses) and black attitude (bowdlerised raps), while ‘Mi Corazon’ is Cuban debt collector’s blues. But there’s a new depth to the songcraft. Much of this album flashes back to late '70s/early '80s NYC, when The Clash and Grandmaster Flash shared taxis with CBGB riff-raff and Jimmy Cliff, all singing along to ‘Coney Island Baby’.
For example, ‘How It Be’ begins with bells, Beatles chord changes and a hilariously overblown widdley-widdley guitar break before settling into a mature '70s soul groove crossed with Stones pimp pulses. There’s an inspired rewriting of the Love Story theme as ‘Where Do I Begin’, a valentine to the five boroughs with hankie-dabbing strings. There’s ‘Will I Be Ready’, a spaghetti-reggae revenge vow. And ‘Gave Up On God’ is shocking in its sobriety, a losing-my-religion hymn set to classical piano line. “Bring me your poor persecuted huddled masses/Put ’em through the system then kick their asses,” Huey whispers, rewriting Lou’s ‘Dirty Boulevard’. Best of all is ‘Girl With A Scar’, a Waits-ian sentimental ballad with gorgeous changes and autumn-in-Central-Park sax solo.
The Criminals used to be cheeky cut-ups hopped up on Scarface and scooby snacks; now they’re Carlito, looking for a shred of the decent life. Livin’ In The City is the best thing they’ve done since the first thing they did.