Jack J Hutchinson - 'Battle Scars'
Reviewed by Iain McArthur • 20 October 2025
‘Battle Scars’ is a live album recorded on Jack’s tour this year promoting his album ‘Battles’. It’s an appropriate title for a record by one of Britain’s ultimate road warriors, who has been taking his blue-collar blues-rock performances to grassroots local venues around the country for years and has the damage to show for it. He’s probably been in your town playing in one of the wee venues that are constantly under threat, just hoping that people will dig his music and that enough folks will turn up to put petrol in the van. In other words, for the people on social media who are constantly banging on about keeping rock music alive, buying tickets in advance and saving small venues, Jack is exactly the kind of guy that you should be supporting and a good way to start would be by listening to this record and ideally buying a copy from the man, as the CD comes as a lovely little package, or it’s just £6.99 on Apple Music.
The 10 tracks were recorded from shows at The Grace, London and The Tuesday Night Music Club, Coulsdon in April 2025 and joining Jack were Phil Wilson on drums and Greg Smith on bass. All the best bits from ‘Battles’ are there plus some other live favourites from the nuggets in Jack’s back catalogue. ‘Don’t Let the F***ers Get You Down’ is a fine opener, followed by ‘Constellations’ with each being a fine example of Jack’s rocking style. ‘Road to Hell’ is a bit of an epic and ‘Love is the Law’ is about as close as it gets to love ballad (but not that close) and is even more epic. There are some Hendrixy outbursts on ‘Hip Slickin’’, ‘Overdrive’ does indeed go into that and ‘Call of the Wild’ would sound great at that festival.
Overall, this is a very enjoyable album from a chap who is very worthy of your support. Check him out.