She Does It Right leers, Boom Boom has a Wilko vocal while Brilleaux wails on the harp, The More I Give enumerates the protagonist’s grounds for dissatisfaction with his current domestic arrangement, Lee Brilleaux's vocals take on a tinge of Howlin' Wolf rasp on the relentless Roxette and delivers a manic harp solo to go with it, and One Weekend demonstrates that, while everything’s done competently they can’t all be gems.
Wilko’s in the vocal spotlight for That Ain't No Way To Behave, which underlines the same point but does, I think, deliver a little mid-tempo light and shade among the more manic moments, but I Don't Mind has the Doctor delivering the mixture as before, jagged riffs, blasts of harp and growling Brilleaux vocals.Twenty Yards Behind is a Wilko exercise in the aesthetics of the wiggle when she walks, Keep It Out Of Sight delivers a slice of sage advice and All Through The City provides the album’s title in Wilko’s portrait of life in the lee of the brightly lit Canvey Island refinery.
A quite magnificent debut, clean, sharp and crunchy, pointing a line straight back to the early Rolling Stones, as stripped down slice of roots rock that’s roughly equal parts of Jimmy Reed, Chuck Berry and Bo Diddley blended with a healthy draught of Johnny Kidd & The Pirates. Call it a political statement if you like, but Down by the Jetty’s laid down the no-nonsense back to the basics wide boy ground rules that was, largely, the template the Punk rockers used to storm the citadel a couple of years down the track.