50 Years Later: Graham Parker and The Rumour Debut With Gritty ‘Howlin’ Wind’

Emblematic of the “Mercury Poisoning” Graham Parker sang about in 1979, the terribly amateurish front cover art of this inveterate iconoclast’s now half-century-old Howlin’ Wind (released April 2026) certainly belies the punchy professionalism of the music inside. As does the equally ill-advised image adorning Heat Treatment, the second of two equally excellent long players released in the very same year of 1976 by GP and his crack accompanists, the Rumor.

Howlin’ Wind was produced by Nick Lowe with an eye (and ears) to capturing the spirit of the moment(s) in the studio, and, in the fifty-year interim, the LP has certainly aged well, in part because fatuous contemporaneous comparisons to Springsteen, Dylan, and Van Morrison have faded away. 

As a songwriter, Parker has effectively utilized familiar tropes of pop, R&B, and rock throughout his career, even being so bold as to cover the objects of his admiration more than once: see Parker and company’s take on the Jacksons’ “I Want You Back (Alive).” As with that song, so it was with originals on this record like “White Honey,” like most of the debut LP, freshened with a no-nonsense attitude that precluded empty stylistic homage. 

“Back To Schooldays” is a good-humored dismissal of disillusion wherein the Rumor pumps out the rockabilly changes with the same devil-may-care Parker sings. It’s the mirror image of the foreboding title song and, even more so, the reggae-infused rhythms of “Don’t Ask Me Questions”: here Graham and the band invoke the apocalyptic air of which the late Bob Marley sang, doing so with an unrelenting, earthy defiance.

Still, in honing his craftsmanship leading up to the recording sessions, Graham Parker spent as much (or more) time dancing as dreading the end of the world. And based on the grasp of terminology the author displays on “Soul Shoes,” it’s no wonder he found kindred spirits in the various refugees from the English pub-rock circuit that bonded as the Rumour.

Erstwhile bandleader, guitarist Brinsley Schwarz plays with the same economy Parker utilizes in language. And while “Nothin’s Gonna Pull Us Apart” is but one of the testimonials to devotion here–along with “Between You And Me”–it is the one that would seem to apply most directly to this flinty rhythm section of bassist Andrew Bodnar and drummer Stephen Goulding.

In his painstaking chronicle of Graham’s honing of his songwriting skills and stage presence, Graham Parker’s Howlin’ Wind, author Jay Nachman goes to great lengths to elucidate the precarious balance of input and cool remove by which Lowe filled his responsibilities as producer. Rumour guitarist Martin Belmont and keyboardist Bob Andrews modeled their contributions on that premise too; as on the whimsical likes of “Lady Doctor,” they find spaces to fill with color and never intrude on the performance of their bandmates. Meanwhile, a brass section (including Schwarz at times) maintains the same joie de vivre on cuts such as “Not If It Pleases Me.”

Graham Parker and the Rumour followed this vivid depiction of tried-and-true instincts on Howlin’ Wind with a sophomore effort equal to and perhaps superior to its predecessor. Blasphemous as it may sound, both are superior to the watershed 1979 record Squeezing Out Sparks, highlighting the irony that, while GP has never made a bad record over the course of his now half-century plus career, his reunion efforts with the Rumour lack the indelible imprint of chemistry from the one-two punch at the outset of the partnership. 

To hear that virtue again, in a form burnished and elevated by the passage of time–and boasting the participation of guitarist Martin Belmont plus the Rumour Brass–2018’s Cloud Symbols stands as a remarkable restatement of idiosyncrasy in its infectious form.