Originally a collaboration between
Ride guitarist Andy Bell and Scottish boxer turned singer/songwriter
Alex Lowe,
Hurricane #1 released two well-received albums on Alan McGee's Creation Records in the '90s before Bell left the band and ultimately joined as bassist with
Oasis. After Bell's departure,
Hurricane #1 called it a day and
Lowe embarked on a solo career. In 2013, with three solo albums to his credit as well as a fruitful career as an abstract impressionist painter,
Lowe was diagnosed with cancer. After successfully undergoing chemotherapy and radiotherapy,
Lowe decided to put together a new
Hurricane #1 lineup, a decision encouraged by McGee. Borrowing an infamous phrase that has been attributed to both Charles Bukowski and
Kinky Friedman,
Hurricane #1's first new album in 16 years, 2015's
Find What You Love and Let It Kill You, is a return to the group's anthemic classic rock and '60s psych rock-influenced sound. Amicably moving forward without Bell,
Hurricane #1 functions primarily as an outlet for
Lowe's melodic,
Faces-esque compositions. Heavily, if somewhat unfairly, compared to
Oasis when they debuted in 1997, the new
Hurricane #1 still retains some of that band's swaggering melodicism. That said, 20 years on from "Cool Britannia" and the
Blur vs.
Oasis battles of the '90s,
Lowe now seems to wear the mantle of Brit-pop survivor with the befitting gravitas and hard-won pride of a guy who's suffered worse agonies than being compared to another band. Cuts like the leadoff "Best Is Yet to Come" and the rollicking "Think of the Sunshine" are groovy, '60s-style folk-rock songs buoyed nicely by
Lowe's throaty croon. Similarly,
Lowe reveals a fondness for rootsy Americana, as on the twangy, sad-eyed "Coyote Ahoy" and the driving,
Byrds-ian "Heathen Mother." That said,
Lowe the boxer lives on, and cuts like "Crash" and "Where to Begin" are bluesy guitar fuzz-soaked anthems, with flashes of festival muscle reminiscent of
Hurricane #1's early sound. By the time you get to the haunting sacred choral-tinged album closer, a spare, moaning synth set against
Lowe's harmonized and repeated vocal refrain of "Find what you love, and let it kill ya," it becomes clear that for
Lowe, reuniting
Hurricane #1 is less about celebrating past glories than defying the odds and moving forward. ~ Matt Collar