In the roll call of psychiatric nurses turned popster (see also Thom Yorke and Kevin Coyne), Manchester-based VINNY PECULIAR deserves far more kudos. By day he may labour away as unassuming Alan Wilkes, but his musical alter-ego has been treading the boards for going on two decades and it's only now his intriguing back catalogue is beginning to surface.
W&H were delighted by VP's previous album "Ironing The Soul" (I think his third under the VP moniker if I have this right), and "Growing Up With Vinny Peculiar" is another set of winsome, pithy guitar pop from this engagingly deadpan performer, who ought to be mentioned in the same breath as enduring English mavericks Luke Haines and Peter Hammill.
As the title suggests, "Gowing Up With Vinny Peculiar" consists mostly of songs relating to incidents and experience involving and/ or observed by our hero on life's highway. Religion, education, pop and politics all come under the hammer and it makes for an insightful 40 minutes for anyone who loves fine, idosyncratic pop. And you shouldn't be reading this if you don't.
It's a consistent set, so obvious highlights don't immediately spring out, although straight away the witty "I Work For God" and the souped-up "Punk Rock Dreaming" register in the synapses. In the former, Vinny works in a call centre directly for Tthe Man Upstairs, but it's a heaven even the angels are sick of. "The rest of us just sit around wishing we could go to Hell, but they'e oh so fussy who they let in," deadpans VP over the dreamy, Pulp-ish sway of the music. "Punk Rock Dreaming", on the other hand, is probably the most aggressive thing here, coming on like a cross-fertilisation of early Bowie and The Clash, and makes a few good points about pop and politics en route.
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There's more where these come from too, though in some cases they take a little longer to sink in. Both "Everlasting Teenage Bedroom" and the immortally-titled "Confessions Of A Sperm Donor" may be superficially funny, but are intrinsically lonely and sad underneath, while "I'm Too Sad To Tell You" is frail, close-miked acoustic folk with a twist.
And VP always astounds with his eye for detail. I've no idea if he keeps a regular diary, but the self-explanatory "We Tried To Drown Our Music Teacher in 1974" (for disliking T-Rex and Bowie, obviously) is one of the most acutely-aimed barbs of nostalgia ever, while the similarly intriguing Glam-era story "We Didn't Paint Our Nails When We Fought The Germans" has one of the most unlikely yearning choruses of this or any other year.
One can only hope there will be many more instalments from Vinny Peculiar, as his bittersweet, insightfully tuneful vignettes are capable of connecting with the slighted and dispossessed of all ages. For too long, the psychiatric nursing scene has robbed us of a cool pop personality, so have a flick through this collection of (as he puts it) "scrapbook confessionals", buy the album and help him belatedly on the road to stardom.
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