“Five in the morning with a bottle of Coors, I was falling down the stairs with a bloody nose, Lying in the gutter, looking at the stars, Hey buddy can you tell me where I left my car,Because I can’t remember what I tried to forget…”
– ‘Everybody Smokes In Hell’

Low-brow art king Ray unleashes from his London lair a solo session of big bad-ass boppers with a set of more trad Rockin’ n’ Stray Cattin’ around from Vern Vain and the Blue Vains featuring Ray’s ramrod-revola Gretsch gyrations. Hollering from way down in the Rockabilly hollow in Hell than his more garage rock incarnation in the Vincent Razorbacks this little beauty puckers up, burns rubber and topples tombstones and is a lot more real and less laboured than Brian Setzer’s ducktail-doffing tribute to Sun Records last year.

Greased up on the high-jinks gin-jowled japery of ‘Everybody Smokes In Hell’ and old rockin’ cranium-cracking chestnut ‘Cast Iron Arm’ you could be forgiven for thinking this is as cartoon-like as his day job might imply, but that doesn’t restrict it shaking chickens in the middle of the room and anywhere else it goddamn well pleases. Certainly not hindered either by the tendon-trouncing double-bass dynamo of The Grit’s Little Man Kurt this collars (upright, velvet optional) the good-time petrol-headed power of Rock’n’Roll, hi-jacks some Bo Diddley hoodoo on the title track, cannibalises The Cramps on a (PVC) brief ride through ‘All Women Are Bad’ and twists like a triumph with a turbine attached on ‘Jet Black Machine’ whilst the appropriately attired ‘Wild Guitar’ shows that his hands ain’t just made for drawing and are as nimble with the pick as the paintbrush.

Should you be labouring under the impression that Rockabilly is full of Teds drinking mild and partying like it’s 1955 and ration-ragged Britain was a glorious age where there weren’t any spades then let Vince vouch for you on this ride that you won’t wanna leave once your volition’s had a psycho-ride on a Bigsby vibrato-system built like a BSM for, as pneumatic as the pert ‘n’ perky Priscillas and pristinely pompadoured Pauls he adorns his art with, this more than matches said artwork and will have you jitterbugging, jumpin’, jivin’ and a-wailing be you Jack The Ripper or a geriatric searching for their bed-time slippers.

“If you can’t take it easy – take it anyway”
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- Stu Gibson