MC5, ‘Heavy Lifting’: Album Review

MC5‘s first album of new material in 53 years arrives at a bittersweet moment. Not long after completing work on Heavy Lifting, the band’s first studio record since 1971’s High Time, mainstay singer and guitarist Wayne Kramer died of cancer in February 2024 at age 75. Three months later, original drummer Dennis Thompson, who plays on two Heavy Lifting songs, also died. (Between those two deaths, the band’s former firebrand manager John Sinclair also passed away.)

The album has been in the works for the past two years, first announced around the time Kramer reignited the MC5 name for a tour featuring members of Jane’s Addiction and David Bowie and Mavis Staples’ bands. On top of all this, MC5 will be inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in the musical excellence category one day after Heavy Lifting‘s release with no original members around to accept the award. (Singer Rob Tyner died in 1991, guitarist Fred “Sonic” Smith in 1994 and bassist Michael Davis in 2012.)

That leaves Heavy Lifting as the band’s final word, five decades on since the release of only their second studio LP, High Time, a somewhat compromised album following 1970’s super-charged studio debut, Back in the USA, and 1969’s history-shaking live bow, Kick Out the Jams. Kramer isn’t alone here, having recruited famous friends and fans Tom Morello, Vernon Reid, Slash, Don Was and producer Bob Ezrin to revitalize MC5 one last time.

This isn’t anything new for Kramer, who’s released a half-dozen solo LPs and collaborated with like-minded artists since his release from prison on drug charges in 1979. In that sense, Heavy Lifting can be viewed as a Kramer solo album under his old band’s name; many of his accomplices here have worked with him over the years, including Was and Morello. The songs proudly bask in MC5’s unflinching legacy, from the metal attack in the record-opening title track to the life-affirming, funk-inflected mantra of the LP’s closer “Hit It Hard.”

But is it an MC5 album? Maybe in name, and maybe in spirit, but that’s about it. Heavy Lifting is more like a tribute album laced with some of the last performances by one of the honorees. On songs such as “The Edge of the Switchblade,” “I Am the Fun” and “Can’t Be Found,” the collected musicians rouse up enough MC5-style energy to make this a worthy tribute to the influential band. Kramer throughout sounds like he had a blast resurrecting the group and its militant essence once again. That five-decade gap, however, is an enormous amount of time between albums to overcome. Heavy Lifting does an honorable job of bridging it even if it’s not quite the MC5 of yesteryear.