Another Perfect Day (40th Anniversary)

To this day, Another Perfect Day remains one of the most unique (albeit misunderstood) albums in the entire Motorhead catalog. The band's first effort sans legendary axe-meister "Fast" Eddie Clarke (following six albums, of which at least three are still considered timeless classics), Another Perfect Day would be the band's only outing with onetime Thin Lizzy axeman Brian "Robbo" Robertson. Clearly a nervous musical marriage from the start, the album captures Motorhead mainstays Ian "Lemmy" Kilmister and "Philthy Animal" Taylor struggling to adapt their raw power and unparalleled distortion to Robertson's more mainstream hard rock instincts and melodic tendencies. Thanks in part to Tony Platt's excellent production, Another Perfect Day ranks among the band's best-sounding records ever, but tinkering with a legendary formula is always fraught with danger (is that a boogie-woogie piano on "Rock It"?), and as one might expect, the results here are alternately exhilarating and sometimes frustrating. On the one hand, the glorious arpeggiated melodies that characterize singles "Dancing on Your Grave" and "Shine" (Robertson's most obvious contributions here) were a total shock to the system by classic Motorhead standards, but their popularity and ultimate longevity as band highlights is a testament to their excellence. Furthermore, other drawn-out blues exercises like "One Track Mind" (which wouldn't sound out of place on any number of early Ted Nugent albums) and "I Got Mine" simply took the intensity and power of previously delivered sub-three-minute blasts and diluted it into four to five minutes, which had some fans impatiently glancing at their clocks. The title track barely escapes this predicament, and tighter, punchier numbers like "Back at the Funny Farm" and "Die You Bastard" manage to revisit the classic bile and fury of years past, but Robertson's unwillingness to be a team player (refusing to play standards like "Bomber" live, never mind his ridiculous fashion sense) virtually guaranteed his eventual sacking. By extension, Another Perfect Day is doomed to be considered a curiosity to this very day. ~ Eduardo Rivadavia & John Franck