Findlay Napier
Album: VIP Very Interesting Persons
Label: Cherrygroove
Tracks: 10
Website: http://www.findlaynapier.com

It's possible that you may recall Hedy Lamarr as a 40s actress, perhaps best known for her starring role in Samson and Delilah and her controversial full frontal in Ecstasy. However, chances are that you won't know that she was also a bit of a scientific boffin who co-invented the technology for spread spectrum and frequency hopping communications, the process that would eventually form the basis for WiFi and Bluetooth. That makes her a very interesting person and one of the ten equally real life characters that have inspired the songs (like her eponymous dreamy opener) on this collaboration between warm voiced and warmly accented traditional-folk influenced Scottish singer-songwriter and Boo Hewerdine.

Featuring guest musicians that include Roy Dodds, Admiral Fallow's Louis Abbott, Gillian Frame and Danish multi-instrumentalist Gustaf Ljunggren, the album embraces a diversity of styles, from the slow, plodding beat, electric blues-tinged The Man Who Sold New York, a song about George C. Parker, the famous conman who sold gullible tourists the Brooklyn Bridge twice a week for 30 years (not to mention Madison Square Gardens and the Statue of Liberty) and An Idol In Decline's tribute to baseball legend Mickey Mantle set to a dream, almost cinematic piano and woodwind arrangement, to the country waltzing George Jones lament What A Shame About George and the jazzy textures created by the flute and marimba on Rising Son, the story of Hiro Onoda, the Japanese soldier who, abandoned a Pacific island, fought WW2 into the 70s. I'm not sure whether it reminds me of a Chris De Burgh or a Strawbs ballad, but, either way, the dramatic building Sweet Science is another strong inclusion, recalling the fatal boxing match between Jimmy Garcia and Gabriel Ruelas during which the former fell into a coma, dying a week later. Sport of a different nature is the subject of the acoustic blues Sport Of Kings, a tale of racing inspired by the obituary of Sir Henry Cecil while, elsewhere Napier celebrates the first woman in space with the breathily sung, acoustic guitar and clarinet accompanied Valentina (a track that casts Napier as a Scottish Don McLean) while the tumblingly lovely, nigh-hymnal (and perhaps a touch Ralph McTell) harmonium and mandoguitar backed Angel Falls is inspired by James Crawford Angel, the WWI fighter after whom the Venezuela falls he discovered are named.

However, while perhaps not the most musically interesting (basically, acoustic shuffling busker blues with Hewardine and Mark Freegard on uke), certainly the most poignant involves the most obscure of all the characters, Eddie Banjo recounting the story Napier's dad told him of a tramp who lived in a cave near Wick, who earned his nickname (actually, Teddy Banjo) because he would play the banjo when he went begging (though he only knew one song, You Are My Sunshine) , and who was later found to have been a shell-shocked WW2 veteran abandoned by the state. An unusual, inspired and inventive album, whether the artists or their subjects, these are most definitely people of interest.

Mike Davies