Dirty Fingers (1984)
Following the critically-acclaimed and fan favourite
Corridors of Power, this album continues the mixture of hard rock and tasteful ballads started on its predecessor and seen again on albums like
Victims of the Future and
Run for Cover. It opens with “Hiroshima”, a fast but grinding hard rocker which evidenced Gary's occasional foray into political themes on his albums. The chorus is a little twee, and the song is not as hard-hitting as the music suggests it could be, but although it's a shaky start the album does get better. Well, sort of. A bit. The title track is a short, one-minute instrumental which is really little more than Gary running up and down the scale on his guitar and showing off, then “Bad News” is a hard rocker with real bite, very guitar-led and quite Zeppelin in its approach.
Dirty Fingers displays a more raucous, wild side to Gary Moore's music; whereas previous outing
Corridors of Power was a polished, professional and slick product with just about every track on it worth listening to, this album feels like it belongs to an earlier time, a time perhaps when Gary was still finding his feet, when he was just making music for the fun of it. It really sounds about ten years older than it should be, and even
Grinding Stone sounds more professional than this. Which is not to say it's a bad album, but the polish is definitely not there.
A cover of the Animals' “Please Don't Let Me Be Misunderstood” doesn't do a lot to raise the quality, though he does a decent job of it, with Don Airey laying down some smooth organ grooves. Oddly enough, with production from Chris Tsangarides and Gary himself, it all seems a little muddy, at least thus far, with the guitar sounding a little too grungy and even muffled at times, and it's a million miles removed from
Corridors of Power. Another hard rocker, “Run to Your Mama” isn't bad, but it's nothing terribly special, decent backing vocals with a nice boogie rhythm, but it's not until “Nuclear Attack” that things finally get going.
With a guitar riff shamelessly ripped off Rainbow's “All Night Long”, it's a powerful, driving rocker which warns of the impending danger of a global war. Gary's voice sounds better here for the first time to me, clearer, less forced and growly. The guitar sounds great too, as Gary cries
”The Russians are ready/ The US is armed/ They're trying to tell us/ There's no cause for alarm!” It has a great keyboard hook which in its turn must have been grabbed by Europe, for their megahit “The Final Countdown”. Great ambulance sounds made on the guitar add to the feeling of panic and paranoia engendered by the lyric, and it's pretty close to the standout, though then again from what I've said about the album so far, that really means it's the first track I like.
Unfortunately, after that “Kidnapped” is fairly standard rock fare, nothing marks it out at all, and then “Really Gonna Rock”, as you might expect, is another unremarkable rocker, basically “Rockin' Every Night” from the previous album slightly rewritten. It's got plenty of energy, yes, but that's about it. I suppose every rock album has to have a track like this, the obligatory “gonna rock ya” song. Keeping things heavy and fast, “Lonely Nights”, which you would surely expect to be a ballad, is nothing of the sort. Hard grinding guitar, thumping drums and some rather nice backing vocals lift this song just a little out of the ordinary, but it's the closer that saves the album. Almost.
One of Gary's finest ballads, it's almost out of place on what is generally to my mind a pretty mediocre album. Carried on gentle twangly guitar with a soulful, hurt vocal from Gary, it's the sad tale of the spirit of a loved one who refuses to leave, perhaps not realising they're dead. Losing your lover is bad enough, sings Gary, but when they won't go to their reward it makes it doubly harder:
”Rest, rest in peace/ You have gone, please leave me alone./ Rest, rest in peace/ You must go/ Heaven is your home now.” Of course, it can be argued that it's just the memory of the girl that persists in the man's memory, rather than some sort of supernatural visitation. Lovely sweeping synth from Airey helps create the eerie atmosphere of the song, and Gary's singing is heartfelt and moving.
Of course, no ballad of Gary's would be complete without the requisite emotional guitar solo, and so it proves here, the song riding on the edgy, ethereal guitarwork of the master, and it's a fine, and mostly unexpected closer to an album which I sadly have to rate as one of Gary's least impressive. Were it recorded in the seventies I could maybe make allowances, but on the back of fine releases like
Corridors of Power and
Back on the Streets, this one is a big disappointment, bar the two excellent tracks which help to partially save it.
TRACK LISTING
1. Hiroshima
2. Dirty Fingers
3. Bad News
4. Don't Let Me Be Misunderstood
5. Run to Your Mama
6. Nuclear Attack
7. Kidnapped
8. Really Gonna Rock
9. Lonely Nights
10. Rest in Peace
Rating: 7.1/10 (would be lower were it not for those two tracks; really quite poor)