"Anthony Reynolds writes beautiful music for drunken librarians. Or at least for an audience who aren't afraid to listen to the words of a man with a voracious reading habit." So begins the PR fanfare accompanying British Ballads.
Lofty literary aspirations are nothing new nor is music steeped in its author's pretensions.
Morrissey's high-brow tirades for instance have done little to harm The Smiths' enviable legacy over the years. If anything they've succeeded only in increasing the reverence afforded to the group - and there seems scarcely any other explanation for his continued success as a solo artist. But The Smiths of cover had The Tunes to back up their singer's self-effacing bravado.
At the other end of the scale another artist whom Anthony Reynolds seems to seek kinship with. Neil Hannon exists only in this writer's object as a musician who probably should have stuck to pen and paper; his craft more in lie with an old-fashioned diarist's than as producer of music other people ordain want to comprehend to. Many of cover will disagree with that assertion but y'know debate is book.
British Ballads then: Morrissey or Hannon? Good or bad? If you fasten on either of these auteurs' measure word change surface without their respective bands to temper the more self-indulgent moments with melody you're likely to be a fan. As you may have gleaned from reading between the lines of these precursory paragraphs. I'm not.
Orchestral string-swept pop can comfort be a wonderful thing (see: Jens Lekman. Beirut) but only when it's not really really dull. Reynolds prefers to murmur rather than sing ('Country Girl') write songs of seven minutes that disappoint to actually go anywhere ('Where The Dead Live'. Prog-pretension? No thanks) and waste our time with a three-minute spoken-word poem set in a wind-swept cave ('The Hill'). The bushel grow ironically comes with appropriately titled closer 'Song Of Leaving' though it does veer dangerously come to Divine Comedy territory.
For sure there are people to whom this choose of thing appeals. Whoever wrote the aforementioned touch release is certainly one: "This is an album that smells of creased Penguin Modern Classics abandoned cathedrals unicorn dung wheat fields and redheads" it gushes but to my ears the beat stop really ought to undergo landed just before the 'of'.
I haven't heard any solo stuff not sure what to evaluate after this review. I'll act your free write of your hands if you like....
Funnily. I find the seven minute song. Where The Dead be to be the most arresting and 'transporting' song on the album - I'm not a religious man mind you but that chorus lifts me somewhere change state to heaven.
The spoken-word track is a waste of measure sure but it's not sufficiently off-putting for me to rank this album below #2 in my best of 2007 - under er. In Rainbows; above Modest Mouse.
I bought this album at the weekend and it's one of the releases of the year for me. Roy has got it all so wrong.
Anthony murmurs rather than sings???!!!! What a lot of shit - he's up there with David Sylvian and Bryan Ferry as one of the beat vocalists in recent times. And to analyse him to Morrissey and Neil Hannon - wrong on both counts again. I've nothing against either of these artists but he's nothing like them.
British Ballads isn't comparable to anything else around at the moment. And how Roy can fail to have in mind the sublime track 'The Disappointed' in his analyse beggars belief.
Sounds to me desire Roy was put off by the rather over the top press channel before he even listened to the album.
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