Artist: Johnny Flynn
Title: A Larum
Label: Mercury
Genre: Folk
Bitrate: 172kbit av.
Time: 00:53:39
Size: 69.57 mb
Rip Date: 2008-05-26
Str Date: 2008-05-26
1. The Box 3:36
2. The Wrote & The Writ 4:07
3. Tickle Me Pink 3:11
4. Brown Trout Blues 5:02
5. Eyeless In Holloway 4:05
6. Shore To Shore 4:23
7. Cold Bread 3:29
8. Wayne Rooney 4:17
9. Leftovers 4:15
10. Sally 3:35
11. Hong Kong Cemetry 4:51
12. Tunnels 3:08
13. All The Dogs Lying Down 4:13
14. Shore To Shore (Reprise) 1:27
Release Notes:
There are people who still consider Joe Strummer to be a punk
fraud because he went to boarding school in Surrey. Gram
Parsons is yet to be inducted into the Country Music Hall Of
Fame because he was a Florida trust fund kid and not a genuine
Kentucky cowpoke. Adele╞s not allowed to be a proper soul
singer because she was raised on fish and chips, not chitlins
and succotash. Authenticity in pop is still a strangely big
deal for some, so heads are going to explode when Johnny
Flynn, an ex-Winchester College choirboy, sings, "Show me the
way to the rubbish dump or the bins at closing time/I've
walked a mile just to catch a smile from a fish without its
brine".
Clearly, this fresh-faced 24-year-old has never had to rummage
through the skip behind Somerfield for his five a day. Flynn,
however, is a trained actor, and - judging by the fact he's
performed Twelfth Night at the Old Vic and once turned up to
west London indie night Blue Flowers with Kevin Spacey in tow
- he's a pretty good one. 'A Larum' is a triumph of method
acting. By immersing himself so completely in traditional
American blues and English folk music, Flynn has invented a
persona that, while not authentic, is mostly utterly engaging.
He's a mile or two further down the highway than Lightspeed
Champion and has reached the point where the concrete turns to
mud and rooks circle the cemetery. Ukuleles, carousing brass
and skewered fiddles are the rosy flesh on his songs' weary
bones. Johnny's voice is perfect for this stuff: plain but
unwavering, and always prepared to cede a verse to another
member of his band, The Sussex Wit. While no-one's rolled
around an orchard or played marbles for centuries, Flynn's
yarns are so charming you rarely feel this is a privileged
toff slumming it for earthy credibility. If he has any peers,
it's Scottish new-folk singer James Yorkston, who always
manages to conjure up an atmosphere of glowing-hearth
conviviality without coming across like an irrelevant old git
in an arran jumper. "I could be somewhere else, I should be
someone else" Flynn laments on 'Brown Trout Blues', but in
fact Johnny is so good at being someone else he's more
compelling than most songwriters who try too hard to be
themselves.