Album Review: Thirteen – Controversy

I sometimes wonder if I’m unlucky for Falkirk’s Thirteen, after catching them live for the first time just over a year ago the previously stable line up promptly imploded, leaving their guitarist and frontman, currently known as Dolly McDolls and also known as Dolly Basshound and Dolly Robinson, in a seemingly endless search for new members, but finally they have delivered Controversy, the follow up to 2017’s impressive Spirit Of Resistance EP, proving, if nothing else, that you can’t keep a good man down for long.

Thirteen play rock ‘n roll that is delivered with attitude and an abrasive punk edge, that description gives you a good idea of where Thirteen are coming from and I could stop writing at this point, but that wouldn’t give you the whole story. Controversy is appropriately enough a thirteen track album that has a sound that sits somewhere between early Social Distortion, Stiff Little Fingers and The Defects, although if you want a full list of their influences it’s easier to listen to 10,000 Record Sleeves, a track dedicated to the music they love. With their sophomore full length Thirteen have picked up the pieces of the last year and delivered an album that screams We Will Overcome, I doubt it’s any coincidence that this message is also the title of the album’s final track.

If you’re looking for negatives then there really aren’t that many, you could argue that as three of the tracks previously appeared on the Spirit Of Resistance EP then that would make this album an act of partial recycling, but as the Controversy versions sound sharper and more muscular than the previous recordings I’m not complaining. I would imagine if you gave Dolly McDolls the chance to change the last year or so in the life of Thirteen he would probably opt for an easier path, but out of his struggles and line up changes he and his band have risen to greater heights with the release of Controversy.

Thirteen‘s website is here and you can also find them on Facebook here