Anthony Reynolds
British Ballads
Hungry Hill/Spinney
Anthony Reynolds doesn’t like going out. In his third album, British Ballads he looks out at a world of ‘buses, cafes, people’s dead faces’ and says ‘no, no thanks’. ‘What’s the point of going out?’; well not a huge amount if it’s to experience Reynold’s gloom ridden landscape.
This singer-songwriter prefers to stay at home. He proudly announces that he doesn’t read the papers or watch TV and experiences life through the pages of his library. So far so misanthropic. The opening track to this album, however, defies expectations with its bouncing musical optimism. ‘I’ve been around but I’ve got myself nowhere’, he sings in ‘I know you know’ and there is a bittersweet edge to the way the lyrics are coupled with lush orchestration, free flowing keyboard and staccato hand claps. Reynolds has a honeyed voice which is a pleasure to listen to. It’s a shame then, that clunking lyrics and tired metaphors undermine much of the rest of the album.
‘Love feels like stealing and stealing is a crime’. What the hell does that mean? ‘The last bar on lonely street’? God no. I can see the misty eyed sincerity with which these songs were composed but the result feels heavy handed. ‘I’ve never loved like I love you’; ‘a girl and a boy’; ‘noisy city streets’; ‘I'm down and keeping count’; there are hackneyed phrases and analogies which glow radioactively at the heart of too may of these songs. The ambition is laudable but instead of perceptive social commentary, you’re left with the bed-sit sincerity of a guy who rejects the world and probably doesn’t wash himself.
The melodrama of Reynold’s vision comes complete with tolling bells and disjointed piano solos. It aspires to the painful beauty of Jeff Buckley at his most introverted but leaves me thinking instead of 80’s singer songwriters Nicks Heyward and Kershaw. There is even an inkling of the album Regeneration; the Divine Comedy at its least comedic.
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