Brothers Young at heart: a review of Power Up
AC/DC
You don’t really expect much from a band that had its breakout hit back in 1973. Most bands from that era are long gone, and it you mention them to anyone under the age of twenty five, you’ll get an eye roll, or worse, a puzzled expression. “Led who?”
Take a kinda screechy band from Australia, whose lead singer died in 1980, and their main composer died in 2017 of dementia. Their other singer is almost completely deaf. The drummer quit the band in 1983 (Reagan’s first term for those who can’t remember anything noteworthy about that year), came back in 1991, only to miss out on tours in the 2010s because he was under house arrest.
What you expect to find after all that is a vestige, a tired old group of burnouts who grimly play the county fair circuit and maybe the occasional Bar Mitzvah.
The last thing you expect is a band to come up with a new album in 2020 that has the same power and energy that made the band a huge name 47 years ago with all new material and the same sound.
AC/DC has done it. Their newest album, “Power Up” is the AC/DC that you knew and loved back when you were in high school, and they are about to make a bunch of new fans two generations later.
Several things made it possible. A lot of the songs aren’t exactly new; Malcolm Young wrote many of them before his death and they resided in the band’s comprehensive vault. The band’s new rhythm guitarist, so essential to the band’s sound, is Stevie Young, nephew of Malcolm, and apparently it runs in the family.
Brendan O’Brien was the producer (he also did Black Ice in 2008 and Rock or Bust 2014 for the band), and he contributed significantly to the continuity of sound.
AC/DC aren’t particularly sophisticated (most of their songs involve just three chords and 4/4) and they depend mostly on fierce energy, thumping bass and screeching vocals. But they do all that so very well you can’t help but like them, and it’s amazing that they still have the same ferocity and power as the young lions of 1973 did.