Ian Prowse stands, craggy-faced and bearded, inspecting the cuff of his worn-in leather jacket. Behind him, a graffiti-covered brick wall, and, set in it, a door, also emblazoned with graffiti, its paint peeling. Presumably he’s out the back of some dingy club venue or something. Either that, or the Scouse Springsteen, former front man of Pele and Amsterdam is loitering in a back alley for other reasons. We’ll not dwell on that. The picture is shot in arty black and white. It says ‘vintage’, it says Ian Prowse is a serious artist. He’s certainly got a reputation as such, and the fact he recently took time out to study for ‘a couple of degrees’ suggests he’s not only a serious man, but a man capable of applying himself. Combining his studies in Modern History and Irish Folk Music, he came up with ‘Who Loves Ya Baby.’
Truth be told, it’s a bit hit and miss, with the songs falling into two main categories: brassy pop and contemporary folk with a distinctly sepiatone shading.
He comes on all glittering Robbie Williams pop on the first track, ‘God and Man’, singing of starlight and oceans – and baptism, the Bible and the Quran. After that, Prowse heads into folk territory: ’Coming Up For Air’ goes all Irish folk and ‘We Were Men’ gets gritty wile sounding all too like the Corrs to be any cop.
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‘I Did it For Love’ jumps back to pop, and ‘Lest We Forget’ brings a theatrical twist to his folk stylings as he delivers a narrative marking 100 since the Great War. ‘The Murder of Charles Wooton’ is another song inspired by historical events, while ‘Empire’ and closer ‘Rising Up the Clans’ finds Proswe in rousing socio-political mode. It’s here that he really shows his strength, with a knack for impassioned songs with clear anthemic qualities.
Bonus track, the lugubrious ‘Six Factories’ is a powerful and moving song inspired by WWII and addresses holocaust denial and again shows that Prowse is at his best when singing from the heart.
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