Released nearly 50 years to the date from when he signed his first record deal, Rod Stewart’s 30th album, Blood Red Roses, somehow feels both complacent and overly-ambitious. He struts aimlessly between genres – the title track is a sea shanty replete with Irish fiddles, as inauthentic as Ed Sheeran's "Galway Girl" but far less catchy, “Give Me Love” combines American preacher vocals with vague, disco-funk instrumentals, and there’s even a lunge towards EDM on “Look in Her Eyes” – without truly nailing any of them.
So busy was Stewart in creating this smorgasbord – he is, to his credit, clearly greatly enjoying himself – that he neglected the lyrics, which wobble between anodyne and asinine. “I’m a good guy in my soul, although I may be getting old,” he sings on the jaunty, cheesy “Rest Of My Life”. Age is clearly playing on his mind. “Now I am getting older, and girls are getting younger,” is his galling observation on “Cold Old London”. The title track attempts to tread more distinctive terrain, with a tale of a sailor confronted by a 60-foot whale, but it is too confusingly told to follow.
Still, there are a few affecting moments. On “Didn’t I?” he is a helpless onlooker to his own child’s drug abuse, and “Farewell”, a tribute to his friend Ewan Dawson on which the enduring rasp of his voice is utilised to full effect, is a rare moment where the lyrical plainness works.
For the most part, though, Blood Red Roses’ vaguely anthemic ditties are as adrift as his sailor, with nothing much beneath the surface.
