THE opening track of Billy Idol’s first album in nine years got my attention. However, I was convinced that Bitter Pill was just a case of the label putting the obvious single first and it would be downhill from thereon in. After all, the world has changed markedly since the man with one of rock’s best pouts was truly atop the charts.

How wrong could I have been.

On reaching track four, One Breath Away, and with my ears still demanding more, I paid the album what I regard as its greatest compliment and went straight back to the beginning.

It was fully a day later before I got to the end of the 11th and final track.

In between, there are songs where he proves Idol, at 58, can move with the times, others were he sounds like he has been cryogenically stored for the past few decades and even more where he just plain rocks out. The vocals are trademark Idol, as are some of the cheesy, and sometimes awkwardly rhymed lyrics, but in spite of, or perhaps because of this, never once did the smile leave my face.

Not so much vital Idol, as Idol revitalised.