Album Review: The Saints - King Of The Sun

Many still rankle about Chris Bailey using the moniker of The Saints some 30 years after Ed Kuepper left their ranks, but that's one for historians. The innovative firebrand punk of their early days is a relic of the past, and for The Saints' fourteenth studio album King Of The Sun Bailey Bailey has assembled an all-new outfit and continued in the vein of elegant, catchy music which has characterised the latter eras of the iconic band.

The opening title track dives straight into Napoleon and Josephine imagery, summoning a veneer of nobility which has been a recurring motif in Bailey's solo work, his borderline bombast and near-pompous verbosity suiting him down to the ground. Bailey is still in complete control of his expressive arch-croon, and the cryptic and obtuse lyrics of songs like A Million Miles Away and the catchy Sweet Chariot clearly carry some import above the literal. Piano-driven epic Turn lasts the best part of eight minutes without overstaying its welcome, Mystifies plays with convention and conjures some semi-attainable paradise, while Road To Oblivion Part 2 is a lurching tale of hedonism and intrigue – Bailey again erring on the side of the grandiose – and he even offers the couplet “My illusion is grand/Not a lovely place to be” on the closing Adventures In The Dark Arts Of Watermelonry (whose title is the album's lightest moment).

The album comes with a second disc, Songs From The Stash – the best of latter-day Saints material, natch – and above all proves that Bailey and his band still have something to offer in the now rather than just as existing as a magnificent moment in history.