Anthony Reynolds - British Ballads

Our review
Customer reviews
Press release

4...according to our Phil on Thu 06 Dec, 2007.

Anthony Reynolds is that dude from Jack. Here's his solo album aptly titled 'British Ballads'. Anthony swings and sways through 10 tracks in tota,l in a very proper crooner ish way. Lush orchestration makes me think of Tindersticks at times... defo gonna appeal to the same crowd. Croonertastic. CD only on Hungry Hill Records!

Debut solo album from ex-lead singer of Jack (...and Jacques).
Features guest appearances from Vashti Bunyan, Colin Wilson (author), John Howard (70s cult crooner), Dot Allison, Simon Raymonde (Cocteau Twins).
Though Jack were press darlings and big in France if not Japan, their intelligent pop of doomed romance, dirty streets and Nabokov and Cocteau references failed to see them looking dour through fringes on Top of the Pops.
After three albums from Jack (including the recently re-released classic "Pioneer Soundtracks’ on Spinney) and a variety of side projects, British Ballads is the first true solo album that can be filed under Anthony Reynolds.
We are lyrically in a world of grime, hopes, city lights and stars. Reynolds also dares to dabble with Rupert Brooke’s classic poem The Hill with the assistance of philosopher Colin Wilson. It seems quite obvious that Reynolds should work with Colin Wilson, just how thumbed and pencil-marked could his copy of Wilson’s 50’s existentialist work "The Outsider" be?
Dot Allison also sings beautifully on the opening song, I Know You Know, and she is a woman with impeccable taste when it comes to aiding and abetting others having worked with Death in Vegas, Arab Strap and Hal David. 70s cult
crooner John ’Kid In A Big World" Howard also contributes some Liberace-like grand piano. And on occasion, the
legendary Vashti Bunyan lends her voice to Reynolds’s to sublime and stirring effect.
This is an album that smells of creased Penguin Modern Classics, abandoned cathedrals, unicorn dung, wheat fields and redheads.

Tracklisting: I Know You Know (featuring Dot Allison), Those Kind Of Songs Bread And Wine, Country Girl (featuring Vashti Bunyan), The Disappointed, A Quiet Life, Where The Dead Live (featuring John Howard), The Hill (featuring Colin Wilson), Just So You Know (featuring Vashti Bunyan & Simon Raymonde) , Song Of Leaving.

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