Album review: Duff McKagan – Lighthouse

By BRIAN GIFFIN

DUFF McKagan was arguably the coolest of the original Gunners. He was always the one who carried himself with a casual, effortless cool that came across as genuine, a born rock star just as happy to be a sideman as long as he was on a stage somewhere, kicking ass.

Lighthouse pervades McKagan’s effortless cool, a rock record by a journeyman musician interpreting the lessons of his influences with his own well-informed musicality and personality. It opens with a slow build, an acoustic-led dedication to his wife, the lighthouse of the title, generating the generally feel good, laid back vibe to is to come.

Tracks like “Longfeather” and “Holy Water” are good simple rockers with elements of country and roots giving off an Americana feel, McKagan’s smoky vocals just an added layer of cool that get better with every listen. “Fallen Down” takes an electrified Dylanesque path with a Hammond filling the spaces nicely. His punk side comes out on both “I Saw God on 10th Street” and “Just Another Shakedown”, taking their cues from the Godfather himself as the former drops fuzzy guitar over strident acoustic riffing and the latter just stands up and rocks out. When Slash enters the picture in “Hope” with his inimitable tone and style, the mood shifts toward the kind of big rock thing we’re more or less used to from them before Lighthouse takes a personal and sublime turn as McKagan teams up with Jerry Cantrell for the semi-acoustic “I Just Don’t Know”, a clear highlight as Cantrell drips guitar lines over their vocal harmonies. Iggy’s appearance at the end seems like an after-thought as he just throws some spoken word weirdness over a short reprise as if he’d just dropped by the studio and decided to rant into the mic. It doesn’t add anything and if it wasn’t there it certainly wouldn’t be missed.

Lighthouse is both what you might expect from Duff McKagan and plenty of what you might not. It’s hardly going to leave other rock records in the dust, but it has a wealth of cool tracks and some moments of transcendence that deserve more than a few spins.