Vinny Peculiar: Down the Bright Stream | Album Review

Singer-songwriter Vinny Peculiar (aka Alan Wilkes) doesn’t really fit in anywhere: he’s too old for the cool kids, too odd for the mainstream, too quintessentially English for his music to travel.

And yet he manages (just about) to release an album every few years for a small but appreciative audience who recognise his awkward kind of brilliance.

Blending sensible levels of nostalgia and sentiment (English Village, Catalogue Trousers, I Only Stole What I Needed, The Doo Kum Inn) with resignation (Girl at the Bar) and wit (The King of Pop, Antony Gormley), Down the Bright Stream succeeds so well because the veracity of the largely autobiographical lyrics makes it intact and invulnerable.

Part Pulp, part Kinks, and very much part Peculiar, this is observational, punk-tinged songwriting at its best. vinnypeculiar.com