Mick Mashbir might be best known to you as the man who depped for Glen Buxton on the Alice Cooper Group’s Billion Dollar Babies and Muscle Of Love albums and related tours. Check out his lead work on No More Mr Nice Guy or Hard Hearted Alice for example. He also, as well, had a hand in the song-writing (uncredited) on Muscle Of Love. The raunchy exciting Never Been Sold Before was his major co-write.
Strungout is his second solo album. His debut Keepin’ The Vibe Alive came out back in 2007, so this has been a long overdue and welcome surprise. This time he really has made a solo album in every sense of the word. Apart from Born To Rock every instrument is played by Mick, and he also produced the album and even designed the cover too! What Mick has a real gift for is coming up with catchy songs and melodies, all with the superb creamy guitar playing that featured heavily on those Alice albums. There are two re-recordings here of American Weirdo’ and ‘Hold On’ from his debut album. The latter particularly benefits from a great extended guitar/ piano outro.
The rest of the album is a tasty melting pot of influences put through his filter. So we get the swampy raunch of Bottom Feeders or the genuinely thrilling Point Doom with echo drenched guitar evoking the surf spirit of Miserlou. Born To Rock meanwhile shuffles along like an unstoppable train with nods to Baby Please Don’t Go. His lead guitar just dances and sparkles over the rhythm track. Float is an instrumental vehicle for his lead playing and it’s got a warm Beatles type vibe to it. Here In the Flesh, by contrast, is a driving rocker with absolutely jaw-dropping pyrotechnics lead guitar. It’s a great vocal from him too – it’s a song that the ACG would have happily picked up on back in the day. De La Vina, with its slide guitar and sinuous feel, appeals and sits well against the strong riffing of 1 900 4 A God. The way Mick keeps changing the pace and focus of the songs is impressive, and it’s really not a surprise that we get the swirling maelstrom of Memnoch’s Blues, and he can certainly play the Blues! Compassion is the big hearted feel-good track here with some killer guitar.
Mick Mashbir has made a hugely enjoyable album and I hope he doesn’t leave it so long until the next one. This is an album to play again and again and delight in as it becomes more familiar. The album is on Youtube and Spotify and is available from Amazon and Apple.