For a man who has spent a life railing at the musical barricades and who has a renowned self-destructive streak, at the age of 71 John Mellencamp is looking and sounding a damn sight better than he might have the right to. These days he might resemble someone who might wave a fence post around to scare you off his land for trespassing, but as a painter and songwriter Mellencamp has aged very well indeed.
His vocal range and tone might now haunt the hinterlands often visited by Tom Waits and Bob Dylan, but the rasp from those hard-lived years adds a wonderful lustre to the songs and subjects he’s addressing and the things he’s chosen to write about now.
