Rod Stewart – 'Blood Red Roses' album review: Struts aimlessly between genres

He still has the voice, but with his 30th album, Stewart has spread himself too thin

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Released nearly 50 years to the date from when he signed his first record deal, Rod Stewart’s 30th album, Blood Red Roses, somehow feels both complacent and overly ambitious. He struts aimlessly between genres – the title track is a sea shanty replete with Irish fiddles, as inauthentic as Ed Sheeran’s “Galway Girl” but far less catchy; “Give Me Love” combines American preacher vocals with vague, disco-funk instrumentals; and there’s even a lunge towards EDM on “Look in Her Eyes” – without truly nailing any of them.

So busy was Stewart in creating this smorgasbord – he is, to his credit, clearly greatly enjoying himself – that he neglected the lyrics, which wobble between anodyne and asinine. “I’m a good guy in my soul, although I may be getting old,” he sings on the jaunty, cheesy “Rest Of My Life”. Age is clearly playing on his mind. “Now I am getting older, and girls are getting younger,” is his galling observation on “Cold Old London”. The title track attempts to tread more distinctive terrain, with a tale of a sailor confronted by a 60ft whale, but it is too confusingly told to follow.

Still, there are a few affecting moments. On “Didn’t I?” he is a helpless onlooker to his own child’s drug abuse, and “Farewell”, a tribute to his friend Ewan Dawson on which the enduring rasp of his voice is utilised to full effect, is a rare moment where the lyrical plainness works.

For the most part, though, Blood Red Roses’ vaguely anthemic ditties are as adrift as his sailor, with nothing much beneath the surface.