Weekly > Reviews
Andrew Vincent - Rotten Pear
Solo singer/songwriters are often (and in some cases quite rightly) given short shrift, it’s a cheaper opewration to run which means we music buying public are flooded with hundreds of dull troubadours who think they are the most entertaining individuals on the planet or the opposite and they play the tortured genius card.
So few of them make any effort to stand out from the crowd and to make honest music that they are true to, instead my desk piles up with demos and albums by this, that and the other solo singer who are as bland and beige as a geography teachers pants as they produce dull acoustic fare that anyone in their bedroom who knows a couple of chords could muster.
That though is the rule for what seems like 95% of these guys and as anyone knows with rules, they are there to be broken and you’ll always have exceptions. I’ve recently been introduced to one such exception, Andrew Vincent, an unassuming and grounded guy if you ever get to meet him in person, who carries the same principles into his music on his latest long player Rotten Pear.
His album I Love The Modern Way, also released through Kelp Records, was a much more boisterous and vibrant affair as he was joined on it by The Pirates. Power-pop is out though and he’s stripped back his sound this time round, leaving an almost lo-fi skeleton of acoustic guitar to lead the album.
Sure other instrumentation makes an appearance and on Nobody Else and the brilliant Under Your Thumb it’s electric all the way, but this is very much an album of delicate and subtle nuances that make it such a free flowing album that hangs together perfectly.
- Andrew Vincent
- Rotten Pear (2010)
- Category: Album
- Label: Kelp Records
- Reviewed by: Kev
- Published on: 25 Jan 2010
- Photography by: The Beat Surrender Facebook Page
- Comments: 0
- Beat Surrender Rating:
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Add to favouritesEmotionally it’s difficult toknow how much of the subject matter is related directly to him or observations of characters he’s come across, but either way you’ll find yourself empathising with him on the brilliant Diane, or the drink inspired Fooled Again. Likewise when he lays out the song, to bare yet more emotion on the plaintive Ruffian you feel like you’ve lived these songs with him and that’s a rare quality in any songwriter and not something that any vocalist can achieve.
An album that is written from the heart, played and sung from the same place yet gloriously cracked and world weary at the same time, take note solo artists…I aren’t saying you should copy him, but making the record you want to make in the style you want to make it can produce results like this and that’s something to be celebrated in an album you’ll listen to time and time again.
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