For whatever reason – money, pressure, the list goes on – the recent Stone Roses reunion failed to produce an album. So Ian Brown took matters into his own hands – literally. Ripples, his seventh solo outing, finds the Roses’ erstwhile singer playing many of the instruments on these 10 tracks, producing the album and directing the videos; his sons feature in his band. You can see him riding a Chopper bike down a Manchester canal, unspooling a guitar solo in the video for First World Problems, a tune that can hold its head high in the company of latterday work released by heritage figures. Yes, the chords recall the Rolling Stones’ Sympathy for the Devil, but fans looking for a Roses-adjacent tune packed with slouch and King Monkey life advice are well served here.
Not everything else lives up to it – Barrington Levy’s Black Roses is a dull, rockist trudge of a cover – but overall, Ripples is studded with little surprises. The Dream and the Dreamer’s featherlight funk guitar is one; From Chaos to Harmony, meanwhile, transposes Brown’s everyman pontificating on to a wah-wah-laden tune. Much here packs the kind of transcendent vibes the canonical Mancunian bands picked up by osmosis from their 60s heroes. The bitterness of Unfinished Monkey Business – Brown’s 1998 debut solo album after the first split – is notable by its absence.
