The Beat Surrender

Can it really be this bad? Upon first listen, I really couldn’t weigh this feller up. I couldn’t tell whether he was a serious songwriter, he was going for the political angle, or he was just trying to be funny. He’s not got a particularly good voice, so I thought “maybe he’s hoping to get by on what he’s saying.” So what is he saying?

Well, there’s one about Tony Blair standing down as our Prime Minister – “Good Bye Prime Minister” – which is mournful. There was another about the NHS and Superbugs which just wittered on for a bit. And then there were others about…things. I found it difficult to muster the interest to follow them, to be honest.

When I first started reviewing this, it took me three sittings to get to the end of the album. I had to keep stopping it, generally scratching my head, while I tried to work out what had just happened to me. I didn’t get it. The songs are all self produced and do suffer a bit from that ‘spare room’ sound. And a few of the songs could have been trimmed completely; lyrically and musically they’re just repetitive and sound simplistic as a result.

I decided it was utter rubbish, but before writing it off completely, I did a little more research to try and figure out what was going on. Maybe I shouldn’t be so harsh, I thought – perhaps he’s got Downs Syndrome – hence the name. I needn’t have been so charitable; once I’d been on the Internet, I discovered that my mate Redvers is 3-D computer animation (I thought he looked funny on the album cover). So he’s not a real person getting looked at down your local Open Mic night, someone’s drawn a little man on his computer and made up some words on the bus home to give him something to do.

But wait! – I hear you cry. What about his videos? Don’t they make up for it? Well, to be honest, I haven’t watched any of them. Last time I looked, this website was “All About The Music”, and I was given an album to listen to – that should be enough.

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