Greetings From The Gutter

DAVE STEWART: “Greetings From The Gutter” (Anxious)

HAVING BEEN a successful Eurythmic, a distinctly un-Spiritual Cowboy, and a largely forgettable Vegan, Dave Stewart has decided to keep things simple, releasing an album under his own moniker. Greetings From The Gutter has Dave in typical post-Lennox trauma: very produced pop/rock which won’t set the world on fire, but may just ignite a few executives’ hearts.

The inhabitants of Dave’s gutter seem to be wearing suits and ties, rather than hopeless grins. ‘Damien Save Me’ is a catchy, tuneful little ditty where Dave implores this Damien chap (hopefully no reference to the character from The Omen) to be his guide, his god and his guy, while Dave wants nothing more than to be a sacrificial cow. Aren’t there people who specialise in dealing with this sort of stuff?

On ‘Tragedy Street’ he gets to grips with Angie, the “Goddess of War”, who has “been sleeping with an army of souls”. Personally, I think he’s been watching too much Ghostbusters.

The line from the title track where “All the skeletons come out to play”, could accurately describe the whole album. Stewart’s particular skeletons are over-production and plagiarism: half of the album sounding like David Bowie studio out-takes. Meanwhile, the backing singers on the title track sound like a gang of demented four-year-olds on acid. Scary.

The stadium-friendly ‘Crazy Sister’ has a guitar riff big enough to cover half of Cork. ‘Jealousy’ is an amiable five-minute shuffle and boogie. Lou Reed pops up with a guitar solo on ‘You Talk A Lot’ and Carly Simon and Dave Sanborn provide the voices for an argument on the acerbic ‘Oh No, Not You Again’. This closes the album on a high, with clever lyrics and a catchy tune, “There’s a gap in your teeth/The words fall through/They spread a virus/And they stick like glue”.

Greetings From The Gutter fits somewhere between the brilliant pop of Eurythmics and the terrible pub rock of Spiritual Cowboys. It may not be as good as Sweet Dreams but, thankfully, there’s not a stetson in sight.

• John Walshe