Glenn Hughes - Reissues album review

Versatile ex-Purpler’s early noughties sets, plus live cuts.

Cover art for Glenn Hughes - Reissues album

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The title of ‘hardest working man in rock’n’roll’ is a hotly contested one, but Glenn Hughes is at the head of the pack in the Seniors section.

The former Trapeze and Deep Purple bassist/vocalist, one-time KLF guest vocalist and now, once again, Black Country Communion frontman has rarely been busier. And his reissued back catalogue is currently doing even more profile-pumping.

These 2001 and 2003 albums rock pretty hard in remastered form, all lithe bluesy riffs and Gillan-ishhowl. Opener Inside on Building The Machine (710) is a storming funk-rock highlight, and other uptempo rockers predominate as ever, making the slow-building Feels Like Home a welcome pace-breaker. The eight-minute Written All Over Your Face performs a similarly welcome anthemic task on Songs In The Key Of Rock (710).

The extras are hardly essential, but not just filler either, as live cuts like a pounding reading of the Purps’ Stormbringer, bonus tracks such as the high-octane Change (enjoyable despite the title being sung as if it’s ‘Cake!’) and interview-based liner notes from CR’s own Malcolm Dome complete two tidy packages.

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