The title reflects the fact that this was not a planned release. “I spend my life in and out of the studio,” Francis Rossi explains, “rehearsing, tinkering, but something happened, and before I knew it we had created something special.” He’s referring to early 2025 jams with Hiran Ilangantilike, a guitarist who he met as a school friend of one of Rossi’s children. One thing led to another, and became this: a fifth Rossi solo album, with 14 songs and seven Ilangantilike co-writer credits.
It follows hard on the heels of last year’s The Way We Were Vol. 1 (an engaging collection of demos assembled from his home studio vaults), but when he says: “It’s loud, the guitars are right to the fore”, it suggests many years might have passed since he last listened to Status Quo’s 1972 classic album Piledriver.
In fact some horribly lame moments arrive late in the running order: Picture Perfect, November Again and Oh So Good all slip into that horribly twee la-di-da-dididdly riff dad-rock territory that has blighted so much of Rossi’s recent work with the band that made him famous.
On the plus side, though, The Accidental frequently moves in other directions. Rossi often sings in a deeper register and more gravelly, and many tracks benefit from backing vocals by Amy Smith. Push Comes To Shove, Be My Love and Things Will Get Better all have something of the Jeff Lynne about them – although the last of those begins with a synthesiser riff and never really does what its title says. Unexpectedly – because it was written by actor Michael Kitchen – the honky-tonkin’ Going Home is much better.
The album is at strongest when it does what Rossi claims and flexes its rock muscles. Opener Much Better is a joyful swagger with nice piano touches. Go Man Go is a stomping, if slightly lightweight, boogie to follow. Back On Your Home Ground is a superior slow blues that leads directly to the brassy riff intro to another good mix of blues and pop, Dead Of Night.
Something In The Air (Heavy Weather) dukes it out with Beautiful World for the accolade of being the album’s best track, and the latter wins. It begins with a stripped-down version of Rick Parfitt’s riff to Rain, then heads off in a superb fast-slow structure, moving neatly between passages of light and shade, and emerges as the track most likely to resonate with Frantic Four fans. The rest of the album, not so much.
