CD: James Reyne: James Reyne (2004)

James Reyne was a natural for a solo career in the wake of Australian Crawl's demise. Having been the handsome face of one of Australia's best loved groups through the late 70s and early 80s, Reyne stepped into a solo career with the elan of a supermodel stepping into a Versace dress. But for an accident of birth he could have also saved the Germans the effort of inventing the enigma code-making machine in the Second World War by singing all their classified messages. The Luftwaffe could have already been overhead while puzzled codebreakers struggled with the impenetrable Aussie drawl and pondered why the Germans would launch the bottle of Brylcream rather than the Battle of Britain. For his debut record Jim employed a hot-shot American band and wrapped his idiosyncratic vocal style around a bunch of well-produced commercial rock tunes to achieve a success as marked as anything he found with his former band. The album finds James musing over a range of topics in his trademark sardonic style - though without a lyric sheet the exact nature of these topics is not always readily apparent. The words Fall Of Rome, however, were definitely discernable in the hit single of the same name. Obviously finding it hard to let go, Reyne, "still thinking 'bout the fall of Rome" some 15 centuries after its demise, exhibited an extraordinary level of concern for the long dead empire. Streamers and a marching band greeted James upon the release of Hammerhead as the store manager congratulated him for writing rock's millionth song about heroin - Andrew Cox