Status Quo, Quid Pro Quo (2011)

Unaccountably overlooked by the Mercury judges, here’s another wincingly-titled Quo album. Twelve more bread-slices of the thuddingly familiar Quo chug (that A to A/D and back again duh-duh duh-duh, duh-duh duh-duh). Beyond criticism, and parody, since you already know what this sounds like. Although, I don’t know: would it surprise you to know that it’s not that bad? Up to a point. The thing that occurs to me is that Francis Rossi (less so Rick Parfitt, with his bleach-blond seaweedy 'do) is a more interesting songwriter than you might think. Rather overegging the 'unpretentious' angle, of course; and sometimes jarringly cheap and cheerful; but the album’s single ‘Two Way Traffic’, 'Rock and Roll and You' and especially the really rather good ‘Dust to Gold’, do some interesting things with one-note melodies sung against chiming large-scale pentatonic chord shifts. Not that I’d want to oversell it: ‘Let’s Rock’ is as naked an attempt to cash-in on vague LiveAid memories of ‘Rocking All Over the World’ as could be. Still.