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This week's roots reviews

JASON & THE SCORCHERS
Halcyon Times
JCPL
****
You can’t keep a good band down – for ever, that is. Cowpunk pioneers Jason the Scorchers turn it up one more time on this, their first studio album since the mid-1990s. Driven on by Warner E Hodges’s fiery guitar and a new rock solid rhythm section of Al Collins (bass) and Pontus Snibb (drums), singer Jason Ringenberg makes light of the years with a typically corruscating high-energy performance. All 14 tracks are new, and the Ringenberg/ Hodges axis has lost none of its power. As the title implies, there is a fair deal of looking back on tracks such as Days of Wine and Roses and Golden Days, but there’s nothing slack or compromised in their playing, and the songs are generally strong if limited. It could be argued that Halycon Days is the album they promised way back in the 1980s.