Vinny Peculiar
Album: Down The Bright Stream
Label: Shadrack & Duxbury
Tracks: 11
Website: http://www.vinnypeculiar.com

Every time a new album from Alan Wilkes rolls around, reviewers haul out the Ray Davies comparisons, sometimes compounding them with a reference to Jarvis Cocker. Repetition doesn't make them any less accurate, so far be it from me to deviate from tradition now. Wilkes is a fully paid up member of the Village Green Preservation Society, and, as such, has free access to the nostalgia archives to celebrate sepia-toned memories of English life. Describing his latest excursion as "songs of young optimism, songs of adult despair, songs of experimental thinking and songs of dumb obstinacy", he again draws on his own childhood and teenage years, the album's very title being lifted from a 1948 novel by Denys Watkins-Pitchford, better known as BB, one of a series about the last four gnomes in England, which was favourite reading when he was in ordinary school.

The album shares the books' love of rural England, tinting it with regrets for the loss of a more innocent age, a theme perfectly embodied in the opening two numbers. The first, English Village, is a tumbling 60s pop bucolic bittersweet reverie of village teenage life, the cricket team on the green, the ritual of watching Top of the Pops (and the ritual of the growns up asking 'is that a boy or a girl?'), NME and Sounds and the unexpected if slightly awkward thrill of finding a picture of a girl you knew in Mayfair, of finally moving away and returning years later to find the council having allowed it to go to seed. This is followed by the even more specific Catalogue Trousers, a Pulp-like dose of dreamy, reflective pop introduced with church organ that reminisces about the vanished world of mail order catalogues, such as Kays, that let families buy goods for weekly payments and young boys to pore over models in lingerie. It also manages to namecheck both Bobby Crush and Peter Gordeno, two icons of 70s kitsch.

Although they're the most obviously autobiographical numbers, other numbers also nod to his formative years. In a subtle comment about enduring values, backdropped by a cosmic swirl of syths and keyboards with Jah Wobble on bass, The DooKumInn offers a spoken memoir about a tacky 70s boutique that brought a taste of Carnaby Street to village kids desperately looking to be cool, its brief existence counterpointed by mention of the babywear shop where his mom worked, and which lasted for years.

At the same time, like every truly adept storyteller, he can inhabit characters and blur the line between the personal and the perceived. Take Egocentric Man which, to a minimal guitar chime and a hint of organ, unfolds a me me me confession of self-interest and self-delusion, the conviction of which cracks apart in the emotional last lines, while the mid-tempo swaying I Only Stole What I Needed, a list of things pilfered (from "nappies for my baby daughter" to Rich Tea biscuits) that calls to mind early Cockney Rebel and plays out like damning social comment.

Stepping away from the general theme, there's The King Of Pop, a slow waltzing, relatively straightforward tribute to Michael Jackson that references the Cocker incident and wonders what or who (the hangers on, the media, his father, the public) led to his death. Likewise, Antony Gormley is a jaunty, playful number poking fun at the 100 iron men sculptures on Crosby Beach, in particular Gormley's cast of his own penis, "a fine old sausage, but it's not very sexy." Forget Ray Davies, this is far more Viv Stanshall.

Also taking an uptempo approach is the jokey meta-fiction Floating Away which, with shades of vintage Bowie, has him trying to write a song about his love but mixing up the girls and being unable to take control of the words, so says she'll have to settle for this one for the time being.

However, it's the slower regret-streaked reflections on life and loss that resonate most, as in the Girl At The Bar, a brief unconsummated encounter with a girl he knew back when, and the heartbreakingly poignant standout track, The Saddest Summer of Samuel S, as, set to a musical box backing, a letter prompts first love memories (the title referring to the Donleavy novel "she was reading when we first met") and an illicit reunion that reminds how you can never truly go back.

He sings how "the past is made of rock and roll gold", and the Peculiar hallmark always guarantees that it is 24 carat.

Mike Davies