The Big Shake Up! Vol 2 – The Dunhill Blues (Evil Tone/Outta Space)

Never mind the confusing title (Volume 2? Where’s Volume 1?) For those who are numerically challenged (guilty as charged) or not watching closely, this is the fifth full album for The Dunhill Blues. And their best yet, for a number of reasons.

Throughout their 20-odd year career, The Dunnies have been a shifting cast of players, with Dan (vocals and guitar) and Adam (bass and vocals) the constants. They could be a hit or miss proposition on any given night or recording session, depending on how many beers they had on board. 

The band’s mission was always to have fun while rummaging through garage rock’s trash - and if you didn’t like that, there were always Powderfinger gigs to fall asleep at.

An aside: Our first encounter was at a gig at The Empire Hotel in Sydney that I’d either booked or was DJ’ing at (a laughable term for using an iPod) when one very loose unit from their ranks poured/spilt a beer into a mixing desk. They’d played a righteous set, though.

The Dunnies have lost none of their good time ethos on “The Big Shake Up!” but maybe a bit of their slop. They sound better than ever. Geoff Mullard’s recording job is a big part of that, as is the addition of Adam Vines (Evil Twin, The Strike-Outs) on the tubs and Mick Davis on keys. 

The 13 songs are strong and Mikey Young’s mastering job makes Dan Dunhill’s production leap out of the speakers.

Each Dunhill Blues album has a distinctive feel and this one lurches into freakbeat territory, thanks to Mick’s omnipresent keys. They’re washing all over opening cut “Best And Worst & Part Of You” and persist even as Dan’s shouty vocal and some magnificent snaking guitar take it out.

The urgent “Needles” has a big whiff of space rock about it (imagine Hawkwind If Lemmy had staged a coup and hung in), and there’s a Pere Ubu feel to the mid-tempo “Perspective” that should have the late David Thomas thumping his walking stick in time now that he’s departed to a “Final Solution” in the sky.

Short and sharp, “The Big Shake Up” sounds like “Exile” era Stones crammed into a very small bar.  The fuzz quotient and snottiness lifts in “It Gets OK”.  “What Could Possibly Go Wrong?” and the nagging “Where Dreams Go To Die” flip the switch back to crazed and will sound familiar to long-term fans.  

“Going Home” is about somewhere that most of us have been to in wayward times when Uber didn’t exist and we were at the mercy of cabs. Enough said.

The boogie-woogie “Bringing Strangers Home” is a tightly-wound slice of angst that would have done The Sensational Alex Harvey Band proud. It’s the best slice of St Vitus here and, once the tone arm has done its work, should have you flipping the platter and playing it all again.

Avoid chop chop. Only accept only genuine Dunhill Blues. Limited to 100 vinyl copies so don’t dare fuck around. Buy your copy here.

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