Well it’s been a year since Ginger Wildheart launched the G.A.S.S project, a fan-funded endeavour consisting of three new songs per month. ‘Year Of The Fanclub’ is a retrospective celebration of the project consisting of twelve of the songs that were released over the past year.

From the opening track ‘Down The Dip’ you’re in familiar territory. Ginger has his very own style and he has been uncompromising for the best part of three decades. Everything he does has that underlying Geordie swagger and a ton of attitude. That continues with ‘Honour’ which features Courtney Love on vocal duties. ‘El Mundo (Slow Fatigue)’ slows the pace a little while adding some brass and strings to give the song a real presence, and the acoustic intro to ‘The Last Days Of Summer’ keeps that going before picking up the tempo, becoming an upbeat piano track.

Track five ‘Only Henry Rollins Can Save Us Now’ picks up the pace again, going into another acoustic track in the shape of ‘The Pendine Incident’ and that formula is repeated with ‘Do You?’ and ‘If You Find Yourself In London Town’ then having a poke at the state of the UK with ‘Toxins & Tea’ which has some real laugh-out-loud moments.

Finishing off the album are balls-out rockers ‘No One Smiled At Me Today’ and ‘Ostracide’ before closing out with another acoustic track ‘Don’t Lose Your Tail, Girl’ which eases you out gently.

Ginger has delivered something that is obviously very personal, and the album flows very nicely. It’s thought-provoking, fun in places, and serious in others. One thing that stands out above everything else though, is that it’s really very good indeed.

4.5/5

‘Year Of The Fanclub’ by Ginger Wildheart is released on February 12th on Round Records.

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Words by Jon Seymour (@JonoSeymour)