Ian Prowse
Album: Who Loves Ya Baby
Label: IRL
Tracks: 12
Website: http://www.amsterdam-music.com

It's getting on for 25 years since Ian Prowse first stuck in a thorn our sides at the front of spikey, not-quite baggy, pre-Britpop insurrectionists Pele. Deservedly championed by the likes of Elvis Costello, Mick Jones and, of course Saint John Peel, who featured Does This Train Stop on Merseyside by Prowse's current band Amsterdam in his final festive 50, he has defied expectation and damned the doubters ever since.

Knowingly divided into Side 1 and Side 2, this album is Prowse's first set of new songs in some five years and his first ever solo outing. Standing apart from his work with either Pele or Amsterdam, these songs are free to go where they will and it's fair to say they cover some ground.

Never one to undercook his performance, Prowse gives it his all throughout, his voice (and heart) as big as Liverpool - at least enough to give old Pete Wylie a run for his money!

He's equally unafraid to search for new ways to tackle big subjects, something he pulls off superbly in the closing track, Six Factories, with its grim but timely message inspired by continued Holocaust denial. If any kind of hope can be taken from such a song it's that if people like Prowse continue to articulate our horror and remind us what man is capable of there's less chance of it happening again.

Similarly, Lest We Forget is an old-fashioned broadside ballad about young men going off to war - specifically the Great War - in the hope of ending all war. As with the greatest folk music the story is at once melancholy and romantic, but its delivery is accented by a searing anger towards those that sent our young men off to die - and for what?

I Did It For Love draws inspiration from the life of Che Guevara and the music of Gil Scott Heron all wrapped up in a sparky pop-rock package that fizzes with fire and intent; while the hymn of praise to his home town, God and Man, all but places the Good Lord on Mathew Street.

Bring on the Healing is an unself-conscious crack at Celtic Soul, dispensing hope with its horn lines, and is well paired with the bright jangle of Anger Mountain and its tale of courage and reconciliation.

In lesser hands the breadth of music and emotional scope of Who Loves Ya Baby would sound confused, even misguided, but Ian Prowse has created a passionate solo debut to be proud of. Lend him your ears.

Nick Churchill
www.thegranvillechambers.co.uk