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Album Review
by SashaS
21-4-2004
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| Vinny Miller: sum-strange this way comes |
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Vinny Miller: 'On The Block'
(4AD)
Vinny Miller: strange-man in a sound sundry-land
Strange, maddening, delightful, thrilling, puzzling, mesmerising, annoying, freaking out… It’s a bugger to pin Vinny Miller down, his reference points, it is tough to corner ‘On The Block’ as well as decide what is the state of the artist’s mind. You know the ole adage that there is thin line between a loony and a genius…
As there is a thin line between love and hate; that’s what ‘On The Block’ will ingnite, such extreme feelings in listeners. This album doesn’t allow middle ground, it is all either/or and not maybes. Starting with a run-through pirate radio stations, titled ‘The Yes/No Game’, with the singer hardly audible on the end of the line, sounding happily high, the aural picture shifts instantly with ‘Breaking Out Of Your Arms’.
It is a simple, fragile and heartbreaking ballad, followed with a similarly paced ‘Roll Complete’ but these moments of tranquillity are rare as former single ‘Pigpan’ single uses unearthly sounds to counterbalance pensive vocal and then becomes manic, possessed over a sonic avalanche that is brutal, powerful and sweeping.
‘Cromango’ is a primal scream and it is eerie and disturbing interlude although it lasts 30 seconds only. ‘Afternoon Nod’ is an instrumental of minimal and monochrome tone that is succeeded by the album’s most vicious track, ‘Bogeyeater’. Miller’s oeuvre is polarizing and you certainly make you mind up on a track-ette like ‘Millalude’.
The title track ends it all with a deep-bass’d musical setting and a simple singing that grows into this howl of loneliness… In a sense of all of us living, as dreaming, in our own skinned world… Vinny Miller is a loner of an artist but certainly not alone with such imagination, fantasy characters and stories to tell each other.
Little is known of Vinny Miller - which might as well be, we don’t want our your kids to know and enjoy something non-extraordinary - apart that he lives in Dorset, has had a contract for five years and this is the first full-length fruit of his labours. If you really wanna a comparison - he could be a very distant cuz of Badly Drawn Boy on an outing to the deepest interior regions… Or, Beck - when the man had the avant-balls.
Some critics have termed ‘On The Block’ folk-rock but the truth is - music from an alternate universe. Genius or… It is sure that there is hardly an artist like Mr. Miller around. Smells like something unique… And, this is a grade we gladly, although can rarely, mention.
8/10
SashaS
21-4-2004
Vinny Miller’s album ‘On The Block’ is released 19 April by 4AD
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