The Voluntary Butler Scheme - Trading Things In

TRACKLISTING:
7” (limited 350) A, Trading Things In B, I’ve Seen You Send A Better Heartbreak Letter
CD: (1) Trading Things In (2) Arctic Climate (3) Heart Too Bored to beat (4) Vending Machine
                          
“Infectious and charming, one-man-band Rob Jones is like a mix of Badly Drawn Boy and Brian Wilson’s more acid-fried work.” Q
There’s no rest for the wickedly creative. Hot on the heels of debut album At Breakfast, Dinner, Tea, the titular Scheme are set to release a four-track EP of tune-packed goodness.
Title track Trading Things In is a perfect example of why people are tripping over themselves to praise The Voluntary Butler Scheme – it’s a dippy love song with tweeting melodica and grinding bassnotes that fantasises about “listening to La Bamba on your MP3 player” and makes the rather sweet statement, “Just like coffee and tea, I need you regularly.”
available on the seven-inch release is new track I've Seen You Send a Better Heartbreak Letter
The Voluntary Butler Scheme is the alter ego of Rob Jones, a 23-year-old pop prodigy penning songs of classic sound, vivid imagination, and tin-pot ingenuity. Rob’s studio may, by his own admission, be nothing much – “just a bedroom full of wires and keyboards” in his native Stourbridge in the Midlands – but his sound is not lo-fi, nor hi-fi, but a sweet marriage of the two.
The key to Rob’s music is sweet simplicity. “I read something that Phil Spector said in some sound magazine about the recording of ‘Be My Baby’,” says Rob Jones. “He was asking, ‘Is it dumb enough? Are people going to get it?’ I’m not trying to make my music dumb, but I think maybe there’s something in that… stuff feels so much more honest when it’s simple.”

Be the first to review this record. Best reviewer each month gets £10 off their next order!