Vinny Peculiar & the Blue Poppies of Ambrosia “Sometimes I feel like a King” (Shadrack & Duxbury, 2009)

More kind hearts than coronets for the king of Manchester

Vinny Peculiar’s Don Quixote-like pursuit of his art is so intense and purposeful that it attracts no ridicule from me, I find it venerating that he still cares enough to put out decent records every year or so. The chorus of ‘Success’ alludes to this, "nobody said it was going to be easy’ and indeed it isn’t when faced with modest success at best, it would be easy to stop. Luckily for us he hasn’t because it is easy to be charmed by his Billy Liar kitchen sink surrealism which is shot through with doses of social critique and wrapped in layers of humour and irony. There is something quite heroic about the whole enterprise.

Without the lyrical skill and tunes it would all just be someone banging on about how society is turning to shit and weren’t films better in the 1960’s, so what Alchemists alembic is employed to transform and transcend. The answer is none, it is all craft and no magic, ‘Uniform’ uses the first person to narrate a noisy spiky song like Wire and the Adverts collaborating on an anthem (a similar snap of energy also courses through the acerbic ‘To Hell with Fashion’). More and more I think that Vinny offers a link between bands like the Subway Sect and new practitioners like the Broken Family Band, the sound and attitude that conceals a true entertainer beneath an overcoat.

The well named ‘Inertia’ and ‘Nurse of the Year’ are slower and more typical with Vinny getting beneath the skin of the characters which is really his essential skill, kind of like Jimmy McGovern fronting Half Man Half Biscuit. On ‘Women and Men’ the tremor in his voice and the slow build of the music makes me think of Dean Wareham and ‘Welfare Statement’ is a British spin on the greats Eggs single ‘The Government Administrator’. There are nods to arch miserablists the Tindersticks and also Baby Bird on the title track which sums up the whole enterprise, songs with humour, social comment and a chorus that you can sing along to and that’s a significant achievement.

Date review added:  Tuesday, August 25, 2009
Reviewer:  David Cowling
Reviewers Rating:
Related web link:  The crown jewels