Healthy Junkies – Forever On The Road, Pt 1 – album review

Healthy Junkies – Forever On The Road, Pt 1

DL – CD

Out Now

This is the soundtrack to the Healthy Junkies tour of the USA in autumn 2018. ‘It was initially the soundtrack to the 3 part documentary film series ‘On the road in the USA with Healthy Junkies’. However, during lockdown many vocals, bass lines and other instrumentation was added and all the tunes were completely re mixed. This is our lockdown baby. The fruits of confined labour.’ Fighting Boredom have been listening, read what we think below.

I’ve not been far this last year or so, the furthest I got was 290 miles from home and it was still raining when I arrived. There’s no songs inside me about that. But a scant few years ago bands were still playing gigs, still inspiring kids and grown-ups alike to bounce around like nothing cared, we still got to experience those nights out. Whether we did it drunk, sober or spaced was up to us, we could still the feel of the bass punching into us as we danced.  

So this is the musical equivalent of touring across the U.S. Healthy Junkies filmed their tour and made this music as they went, it captures where they were and what happened. It skips from all out Stoogathon guitar mass attack to a hip hoppity beat and jazzed out grooves. It’s the furthest thing away from what I expected, even when I didn’t know what I expected, I didn’t expect a fairground organ with darkness slowly descending. I didn’t expect the nearest thing I’ve heard to the brilliantly wasted Hanoi Rocks snatching me back to a bleached blonde mop and stupid dancing. I didn’t expect the coolest French accent in the world right now or the gravel voiced nastiness contrasting that. 

It switches from musical style to musical style, pretty much effortlessly. The fact that this was a soundtrack and the band decided to make it into an album during lockdown speaks volumes. This is brilliant. Oh and yes, they cover Nirvana, again without any outward effort, and again, brilliantly.Get hold of this one, it’ll keep you going until we can be all dancing again.

Healthy Junkies website is healthyjunkies.co.uk, they are on Facebook, have a Bandcamp page and Tweet as @HealthyJunkies

All words by Adrian Bloxham.

Adrian Bloxham

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