Music reviews. CD reviews. Critically hip!

Any Trouble almost made it big in the early 1980s. They had everything going for them. They were on a quirky label called Stiff which had managed to also sign a weird, very talented guy named Elvis Costello. They had something called a music video that was on medium rotation on this new cable television channel called MTV. Perhaps most importantly, they had this great (and it’s STILL great), instantly memorable single titled “Second Choice.” What was supposed to happen never did; the band released a few albums of rapidly diminishing success and discombobulated. Clive Gregson, the front man, found himself playing in Richard Thompson’s back-up band and the other rotating members of Any Trouble went on to other things as well.

Almost a quarter-century passes. Any Trouble reforms, with original members Gregson, Chris Parks, and Martin Hughes, along with British folk mainstay Mark Griffiths. Stiff Records, long vanished, also reforms and signs Any Trouble as one of its first acts. So how is LIFE IN REVERSE, the offspring of this Auld Lang Syne? Well, it’s surprisingly good, amazing good, actually.

The first, immediately self-evident element of LIFE IN REVERSE is that Gregson, now as then, has an uncanny ability to craft deceptively simple little pop songs that linger nicely in the back of the mind after the first or second time. There is a beautifully bouncy tune, “Angel In Disguise,” which is perfect in every way and just so unassuming that it almost gets past you the first time through, until about halfway into it there’s this beautiful piano solo that takes your breath away, and before you know it you’re hitting the repeat button and playing it, over and over. Any Trouble does the same thing on the nominal title track, except on “Reverse” there’s this neat little guitar solo, nothing flashy or loud, but it has a plethora of pimpy little notes about halfway through that kind of take your breath away. So you listen to all of LIFE IN REVERSE over again. And, just like the first time, it’s all great, just loud enough to get your attention, a subtle tap on the shoulder with a velvet glove, guitar, keyboard, bass and drums, and they play like a band. Gregson’s vocals are like an old friend you haven’t talked to in, oh, about 25 years. They’re older --- how did that happen? But aren’t you glad it did? --- and warmer, a little deeper, and there’s not much range, but y’know what? There doesn’t need to be, they fit the songs like a soft glove. The songs themselves --- “What To I Have To Do?,” “Wanderlust,” “The Man I Used To Be,” “I Want You” --- don’t try to recapture teenage angst, but deal with “grown folks” issues of life and love and loss, both with and without regret.

So…LIFE IN REVERSE. The songs are perfect, beautifully written, impeccably performed, and wonderfully produced (thanks to the steady hand of original Any Trouble producer John Wood). If you had told me twenty-seven years ago when I was busily wearing out my 45 of “Second Choice” that I would be sitting here in 2007 with a new Any Trouble CD which is as good as anything they ever did I would never have believed you. But you were right.