Little Angels Are Big, Bad and Back, and Nobody Saw It Coming

Let me get the confession out of the way first. In the early Nineties I played bass in Garp, a Dutch power-rock trio with more volume than sense. We had heroes, and Little Angels were near the top of the list. It wasn't the hits or the hair, though there was plenty of both. It was the energy: the power, the drive, the sense that five lads from a seaside town in North Yorkshire had worked out what rock'n'roll was for. When they split up in 1994, I was gutted. So yes, I'm an old fanboy. But I'm a fanboy who knows what he's talking about, with the same rock'n'roll still in his blood as these men.

If you've never heard of them, that's not your fault. Little Angels started in Scarborough in 1984, released their first mini-album, Too Posh to Mosh, in 1987, and by the early Nineties were one of the biggest British hard rock bands of their generation. They scored eleven UK Top 40 singles, from "She's a Little Angel" and "Boneyard" to "Womankind", and in 1993 their album Jam went to Number One. They shared stages with Van Halen, Guns N' Roses, Aerosmith, ZZ Top and Bon Jovi. Then they said goodbye at a sold-out Royal Albert Hall and walked away. There was a short reunion around Download in 2012, but no new music. Until now.

A few weeks ago on this site, Kodaline said goodbye. Little Angels are doing the opposite. The reunion tour was already big news this autumn, and I was, as far as I know, the first person in the Netherlands to buy a ticket. But when the band announced new material on top of it, the old fans did a little dance around the kitchen table. "We would never make a new record unless we felt we still had something to say," the band says. "And it turns out we do."

Five songs, no fillers, and not a single moment to catch your breath.

They recorded the five songs in one hot week at Chapel Studios in Lincolnshire, live in one room, the old-fashioned way. There's no tuning on the vocals, and the drums are mostly first takes. Then the tapes went to Vancouver, to Mike Fraser. He mixed Jam back in the day, as well as Aerosmith's Permanent Vacation and Pump, co-produced AC/DC's Ballbreaker, and worked on records by Van Halen, Metallica and The Cult. The band asked him to bring back the spirit of those records, and he did. The circle closes in other ways too. The title nods to their Big Bad EP from 1989. And "You Want Love" is a new version of "I Want Love" from that very first mini-album, now a duet with Doris Brendel.

The opener, "All For One", is the strongest thing here, and it may be among the best things they've ever recorded. It has a huge chorus and those horns, and Bruce Dickinson's guitar is grinning from ear to ear. Play it next to "Boneyard" and it doesn't blink. On the tour it's going to take the roof off. "Hero (That Was Then, This Is Now)" looks back without wallowing. "This wasn't about youth anymore," Toby Jepson says. "It's about returning home." That makes it a cousin of Orchestra Baobab's Made in Senegal, reviewed here last week: another old band discovering that home is the best place to start again. "Small Town Boys" struts like The Who on a day out in Scarborough, and "Raised to the Ground" slams the door behind it.

And Toby Jepson sings as if time stood still. The riffs tear everything apart, and you can't help headbanging. Mark Plunkett's bass rumbles through the floorboards, and Mark Richardson, who went on to drum for Skunk Anansie and Feeder, plays like he's knocking the dust off three decades. Where have these men been keeping all this energy? In a jar on the seafront? This is synergy in its purest form: one plus one makes five, or maybe more.

My heart wants to give this seven stars. The scale stops at five.

Is there anything to criticise? Well, it sounds as if time has stood still, and some will say that's the only thing you can hold against it. Oh, sod it. Little Angels are back, and that's the only thing that matters. Give the People What They Want, The Kinks called an album in 1981. That's exactly what happens here. This is a loyal army of fans who never stopped loving this band, and they get what they want and, frankly, what they need.

So why four stars? My heart wants to give it seven. But the scale stops at five, and on Rafelrand five stars are reserved for records that break new ground. That is the one thing this EP doesn't do, and doesn't want to do. It's pure nostalgia, but a very, very tasty kind. And five songs aren't nearly enough.

After this tour there has to be an album. All good things come back, and so, it turns out, do Little Angels.