“I’ve got eyes and I don’t like what I see,” strains Hunt Sales, staring point-blank at the inevitability of creeping death and lamenting in solemn surrender, “There’s been lonely nights,” on opener “Here I Go Again.” After nearly four decades of shooting dope and smoking rock, the Lust for Life and Tin Machine percussionist has straightened out and released his solo debut, Get Your Shit Together. Weathered and pained, Sales’ coerced vocals emerge like honks from a banged-up car, wringing out primal insistence from the T. Rex-meets-Stax brass Klaxon twofer “Sorry Baby” and “I Can’t Stop.” Stooges punk zeal in “Way on My Own” and classic Chuck Berry riffage on “Shimekra’s Got the Hook Up” stand out as well. “One Day,” part supplication, another maudlin desperation, finds the Detroit native’s wails entwining with the dirge acoustics that tripwire “It Ain’t Easy,” a sobriety manifesto ricocheted with war-march bass percussion. You can’t help believing Hunt Sales.
This article appears in March 22 • 2019.