Album: Sir Vincent Lone <!-- none onestar twostar threestar fourstar fivestar -->

Songs for Lonely Americans, COOKING VINYL

Andy Gill
Thursday 07 September 2006 19:00 EDT
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Sir Vincent Lone is the pseudonym of Jackie Leven, intended as a means by which this most prolific of songwriters might release more than his usual complement of poetic insights and laments. It's particularly apt here on a collection of reflections on solitude, romantic yearning, the death of illusions and the faltering grasp of dreams, mostly delivered in Leven's usual Caledonian folk-rock manner, with organ or melodica underscoring his guitar. The exceptions are "Moscow Train", on which he experiments with hip-hop techniques, and "Straight Outta Caledonia", whose Eighties techno-pop recalls Scots bands from Skids to Simple Minds. Neither is as effective as the troubadour style where he articulates sentiments such as the haunted recollection of love in "The Lights Below": "Her red lips say the words that smite the breast/No Bible words can get you out that hole/Like quarrymen alone in mountain rain/Returning in the dust to cold caravans/To other people's lives on the radio".

DOWNLOAD THIS: 'The Lights Below', 'Revenge Of Memory', 'In Search Of Stone', 'Balamory Death Chant'

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