Exciting young Norwich troubadour with a difference RORY McVICAR recently made a splash with W&H thanks to his recent single 'Now That You're Mine' and has been quietly wooing all comers from Radio One's Rob Da Bank to an ecstatic festival crowd at Serbia's Exit Festival in recent times.
His eponymous debut album admirably demonstrates why he's knocking 'em dead, too, though it's important to point out that the off-kilter, jazzy 'Now That You're Mine' isn't really representative of the record as a whole. Indeed, 'Rory McVicar' provides us with a variety of moods from folksy acousticism through to full-blown indie rock-outs and nearly always comes up smelling thrillingly of roses.
It's a little simplistic to say the tracklisting runs with skeletal acoustic tunes alternating with fleshed-out full-band songs, but broadly that's the truth and it keeps you on your toes. Deceptively gentle opener 'Little One' is a low-key love song built around guitar, splashes of keyboards and McVicar's close-miked voice. It's simple and effective, but there's something about his sleepy, yet sharp delivery that adds a faint tinge of vitriol even to lines like "I've no idea where I'll be a year from today/ I hope you'll come with me anyway."
It's not the only time this sparse fatalism works beautifully, either, for he repeats similar tricks on tracks like 'One More Lullaby' and the icily chromatic 'Resentments' which has more than a touch or two of the Thom Yorkes about it: not least when Rory delivers a lyric like "it's not a case of them versus us/ but if you haven't yet, you really must" and the sombre strings swell and weave an icy net around your heart. While featuring his whole band, the downbeat closing track 'Goodbye To An Old Friend' is resolutely lo-fi and sounds like it could well be a rehearsal room recording with loads of hiss coming through. Despite that, though, it has a dog-eared power all its' own and - in a similar vein to The Only Ones' 'Don't Feel Too Good' - shakes something quite glorious out of its' daze.
None of which means 'Rory McVicar' is short on decent, idiosyncratic pop tunes either, because it surely has its' fair quotient. With its' winning, oddly-tuned Velvets-style guitars, 'Without Thinking' shows Rory and co. can do tense and brooding, while the tenacious, low-riding groove of 'Strange Belief' soon worms its' way into your head and heart alike and the infectious 'At Yr. Convenience' could almost be a slightly more mature Jack Penate.
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More challenging, though, are 'All Your Life' and 'Pretend Song', which strike this reviewer as the album's two key tracks. Initially, the former throws shadows closer to Calexico's diablo-flavoured Americana than regulation indie with its' shuffling beat, rattlesnake percussion sounds and baritone guitars but when the band get hold of it for the whirlwind ending full of drum explosions it provides that always-essential 'where the shaggin' hell did that come from?' moment. 'Pretend Song', meanwhile, is the most chameleonic, epic thing here. Taking in everything from samples (crashing waves and splatchy electronica) through to lonely balladeering ("everything that I said made no difference at all" mourns Rory at one point) and finally lonely, meandering piano and screes of Sonic Youth-y feedback it's something of a bruised, quixotic affair stretching to six minutes plus but it never fails to intrigue.
'Rory McVicar', then, proves the promise of 'Now That You're Mine' was anything but a fluke. It's slightly lop-sided and oddball in its' approach, but such maverick qualities have rarely scared this writer off and certainly 'Rory McVicar' and 'quality' are not going to be such odd bedfellows if this fine debut is anything to go by.
(www.myspace.com/rorymcvicar)
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