‘Bambu’ by Dennis Wilson

‘Bambu’ isn’t a real album. Before the death of Dennis Wilson, he was working on a follow up to his only real album, ‘Pacific Ocean Blue’. Last year, when this album was re-released, it came with a second disc containing the tracks that had been recorded as part of this process. As such, it’s not really fair to think of it as an album in its own right. But I’ll do it anyway.

For a solo album from the drummer of a band long past their best, ‘Bambu’ isn’t a bad listen. It’s a mix of rockier tracks and slower, quieter tracks. The latter are generally the best bits – Wilson sings with a fragile voice, but a very evocative one when the material suits it. The rockier tracks aren’t bad – they’re often enlivened by some excellent use of a horn section and other accompaniments, but they’re let down by their lyrics which are only really traditional rock ‘n’ roll clichés – attractive girls at parties are good, being a rock star is fun, and so forth. ‘School Girl’ is particularly cringe-worthy, being horribly inappropriate for a man in his mid-thirties, especially given Wilson’s somewhat tangled web of personal relationships to that point.

So it’s an interesting listen, and it probably would have made a good album had it been tightened up, trimmed down and generally finished. Certainly for a bonus disc of material on another record, it holds its own pretty well.