Hot Diggity Vinyl

There’s nothing like a Brian Houston record and this is nothing like a Brian Houston album.
Well actually. It is. Of course it is. Houston has left his indelible mark on everything he has done over 35 years. That voice. Those melodies. His body of work includes rock, folk, country, soul and old time Gospel and his own charismatic presence is the stamp.

Hot Diggity though. This really is different in that it is different in the overall piece but also in the minutiae pieces too. The shifts are constant. Just when you have a song in your hand, it’s gone, drawing out to other spaces and sounds.

This is Houston at his most imaginative. The studio is an instrument in itself, allowing Brian to move from simplicity to complexity in percussive shifts and harmonic flourishes. Full of invention.

We open with electric guitar doing Daniel Lanois atmospherics. Then sumptuous harmonies. In I’ll Get Over You those harmonies bamboozle with beauty. Anna could be the 60s, blending Motown and the British Invasion. Summer’s

Coming is like Springtseen’s Waiting on A Sunny Day. Volcano is all moody and adds that Peruvian song El Conder Pasa that Paul Simon nicked before him.
By the time we get to I Wish the electric guitars are beginning to rage. I hear Helter Skelter giving way to a Crosby Still, Nash and Young guitar solo.
Singing over spoken word on Don’t Worry we are touching angelic healing and hopefulness. A spiritual lift for the start of every day.
Then, Hot Diggity, a piano leads us into the title track which ends a long way from that start and a catchy chorus that Sting and Shaggy would have died for.

I end up hearing John Lennon guitar. As the 60s ended and the 70s started Lennon cranked it up and Houston is sounding like he has been listening to Yer Blues, I Want You (She’s So Heavy) Cold Turkey and New York City.

Another belter from Belfast’s Troubadour but with electric guitars up front and centre with riffs, lead breaks, all mood and impact. Electrifying.