MOGGS MOTEL

When UFO finally hung up their boots a few years ago, few people bothered to ask what legendary frontman Phil Mogg would do next. The band's final tour was cancelled due to the singer's ill-health, and a sense that all good things were coming to an end was hard to ignore. When Mogg had a heart attack in 2022, thoughts of new music or another project were hard to conjure, even for his most devoted fans.

But some musicians are made of sterner stuff, and nobody survives for 50 years in one of the world's hardest-working rock bands without developing some serious stamina. It is perhaps inevitable then, that Phil Mogg would live to sing another day. MOGGS MOTEL is the result of a songwriting collaboration between the great man and VOODOO SIX bassist Tony Newton, and the results are firmly within Mogg's long-established wheelhouse of soulful but gritty hard rock. Backed by a lineup that includes long-time GARY MOORE alumnus Neil Carter, he belts these 12 songs out with the same ebullient intensity that he trademarked back in the early '70s. Phil Mogg is alive and well, ladies and gentlemen.

If anything distinguishes "Moggs Motel" from the numerous top-tier studio albums that UFO released during their last couple of decades, it is that these songs hit a little harder and pack a more contemporary punch. Beyond that, this is a straightforward exercise in hearing Phil Mogg sing the living shit out of every song that dares to cross his path. The opening "Apple Pie" is a none-more-classic rocker, with shades of THE CULT, and a real, haughty swagger that reaffirms that, at 76, Mogg has still got that indefinable it. If his health hasn't been so great in recent times, nobody told his voice. He still sings with a faint sneer and plenty of earthy conviction, sounding very much at home amid his new band's unfussy, hard-hitting attack. "I can't unsee the things that I've seen," he snarls on the ZZ TOP-like stomp of "Sunny Side Of Heaven", and the twinkle in his eye is almost audible. Phil Mogg is having an excellent time.

The remarkable thing about "Moggs Motel" is how it makes a lot of much younger, so-called "classic" rock bands sound a bit half-hearted and lacking in oomph. Newton and Mogg have written 12 great songs and performed them with passion, and what could have been a celebration of a great career now sounds more like another open-ended chapter. From the atmospheric blues rock of "Face Of An Angel", to the elegant, sobering breeze of the closing "Storyville", what Phil Mogg did next turned out to be more of the brilliant same. UFO may have killed its engines, but their unstoppable, soul-singing talisman has plenty left in the tank.