Ulysses: Law And Order

Glam-loving West Country stompers return in fine fettle.

Ulysses Law And Order album cover

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This Bath quartet gained a certain amount of attention initially thanks to a combination of glam-pop stylings and Darkness-style hard-rock punch. But now the novelty has faded, what’s left? Songs, which luckily Ulysses have no shortage of on their third full-length set.

Give me little love, give me leather gloves, give me law and order,’ they request on the title track. Oh, if you insist. Then the agreeably lascivious Bad Company-style romp Lady tells us, ‘In the dungeons of Japan, there’s a girl for every man.’ We’d dispute this factually, but as a line in a rock’n’roll song, it won’t be denied.

The similarly sleazy, handclap-tastic glam of Dirty Weekend also stands out, replete with orgasmic noises as it, erm, climaxes. But this ain’t just dumb-clever gonzo rock – songs such as Mary Jane and Crazy Horses Ride The Snake benefit from restless arrangements that continually prick up your ears with the inventive joyousness of a 21st-century Jellyfish. All told, then, it’s a fair cop.

Johnny Sharp

Johnny is a regular contributor to Prog and Classic Rock magazines, both online and in print. Johnny is a highly experienced and versatile music writer whose tastes range from prog and hard rock to R’n’B, funk, folk and blues. He has written about music professionally for 30 years, surviving the Britpop wars at the NME in the 90s (under the hard-to-shake teenage nickname Johnny Cigarettes) before branching out to newspapers such as The Guardian and The Independent and magazines such as Uncut, Record Collector and, of course, Prog and Classic Rock