Willy Moon: Here's Willy Moon – review

Last year, Jack White's first solo album offered a cover of Little Willie John's I'm Shakin'. This year, Willy Moon's does the same – and offers a microcosm of their differing approaches. White's version was jumping but respectful; Moon's puts a scratchy guitar line atop juddering drum-machine beats, while he quavers and hollers the vocal line in 50s fashion. In fact, that's more or less what he does across the album. Sometimes – as on the single I Wanna Be Your Man – there's a little bit more going on, something other than his voice to carry some melody, and there's a cleverness to the onomatopoeic percussion of Working for the Company, which sounds like a production line. However, older listeners will be transported straight to the 80s by this rockabilly/technology fusion – not just because the beats are so purposely clumsy, but because Here's Willy Moon sounds far less like a fusion of Elvis and urban than it does Sigue Sigue Sputnik and Westworld, who had exactly the same idea nearly 30 years ago.