February 1, 2008

Songdog

A Wretched Sinner’s Song

6 / 10 Ex-playwright and ex-punk Lyndon Morgans is in love with the Beats – the ’50s poets, not Mike Skinner’s now-defunct label. Accordingly, his third album of glacier-paced folk noir draws on their dictum of magnifying the everyday into often gut-churning close-up. “I asked the lady doctor to invite me to her place, so I could lick off the anti-ageing cream she rubs into her face”, he confesses on ‘Like Kim Novak’. His other amour is Belgian super-troubadour Jacques Brel, who adds a melodramatic quiver to his voice that’ll have easily amused listeners doubled-up with laughter. But, for all the kickability of an 18-song, two act set of such turgid portent, the storytelling hints at a real gravity. Apparently, Bruce Springsteen personally requested a copy of the last album and you suspect it may have seeped into ‘Magic’’s bleak tone.

Gavin Haynes

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