"The mood of this record is a good expression of what I've been through in some ways. It shows the side of me that I usually keep hidden behind the flat-out rock'n'roll energy. So it's been a great album to record, to listen back to and say, yeah, that's me as well.
Doc Neeson has lately found time to reflect. The Angels, the band he fronted for 25 years with a menacing volatility with few peers in rock'n'roll, were torn apart by his shattering road accident of '99. Doctors told him he'd never perform again. They were wrong. But not even Doc expected this.
"The Angels derived a lot of their power from very tight riffing and very tight rhythm patterns," he acknowledges. "So the first challenge was, 'How do I get that power, a different kind of power, in an acoustic mode?'"
He glimpsed an answer in the Liberation Blue back catalogue. Struck by the imaginative feels and warm muscularity of the Church's El Momento Descuidado CD, Doc called on that album's drummer/ producer, Tim Powles.
"Tim's production method is very organic in that he wouldn't allow people to overdevelop an idea, to get what they were playing too organised," he says. "Quite a few times, when I thought I was running through an idea, he was actually taping it with the view of 'This is the take'!"
"Some of it is a case of internalising the songs, in a way," he says. "It was very interesting from a performance point of view. I'm almost letting the listener be a fly on the wall to what I'm feeling and that creates intimacy
There's gallows wit, too, in the degenerate glam-rock sleaze of Take A Long Line and the Bastille Day fog of Marseilles - and a perfectly realised air of lament to the song that started it all, Am I Ever Gonna See Your Face Again.
"Rather than hitting people over the head with a sledgehammer, this is more of a CSI approach," Doc chuckles. "It actually opens up the songs to a lot of interpretation. As a songwriter, I'm really pleased it was possible to do that."

Track Listing

Disc 1:

1. Be With You
2. No Secrets
3. Eat City
4. Big Star
5. Love Takes Care
6. Face The Day
7. Shadow Boxer
8. Stand Up
9. I Ain't The One
10. Out Of The Blue
11. Take A Long Line
12. Am I Ever Gonna See Your Face Again
13. Marseilles