Jackson Firebird are an Australian hard-rocking duo who crashed onto the scene in 2012 with their debut album Cock Rockin’. Now they are ready to misplace our socks again with their second album Shake the Breakdown (both Napalm Records).

Although the album opener ‘Mohawk Bang!’ seems to lodge this album in the Stoner genre, with its heavy, dirty riffs and slightly distorted vocals over a small range, by the fourth song, ‘High Love’, Jackson Firebird shows their true colours combining the best of both worlds with the cheer and riffs of Rock n’ Roll and the hard crunchiness of Hard Rock in a combination that you can either dance or bang your head to. While it may not have quite the raw swing of, say, Cold Chisel’s ‘Yakuza Girls’, Jackson Firebird throw a whole lot of modern sound into the mix.

Vocally the styles range from stoner, through a lot of Rage against the Machine in songs like ‘Sick n Tired’, to a style I normally associate with bands like The Black Crowes in the verse of ‘Shake the Breakdown’.

The album also contains two splendid covers, the first being a somewhat Stoner version Queen’s ‘Fat Bottomed Girls’, the second a really fast paced and swinging cover of ‘The Clapping Song’, originally by Shirley Ellis in 1965.  In both cases the songs are arranged and performed in a way that makes it sounds exactly right for this band; adaptations rather than covers.

This is a very strong album where the sound is excellent, the songs are great fun, danceable, and well composed. Australia has a vibrant music scene and bands like Jackson Firebird, and Airbourne before them, prove that the Aussie combination of Rock n’ Roll with something harder is definitely alive and worth spreading.

8.5/10

LORRAINE LYSEN