Jon Byrne
Album: Built By Angels
Label: Self Released
Tracks: 13
Website: http://www.jonbyrne.co.uk

As an album, "Built By Angels" is miles away from chocolate box country villages as you're going to get, even the delivery has more of an Americana, blues feel than folk and yet it feels as English as fish and chips. There is an acerbic, and at times, self-depreciating wit that comes with growing up in the school of hard knocks, it works as a defence mechanism and provides a great foundation for an album.

Jon Byrne's voice may lack the colour range of more refined singer-songwriters, but his black and white delivery is also developing very different pictures. "Built By Angels" is a tough album, one built on hard streets, but that doesn't mean that it's not an album lacking in wordsmithing and poetry, not by a long way.

I found myself being reminded of Lowrie when listening to this album, sketches of life that the establishment really would prefer to pretend isn't quite real. There is a stark reality to the album, one that is rich in social politics and justice and that also makes it quite an uplifting album, because Byrne also paints pictures as to how things should and could be.

"Built By Angels" is the album of a battler, but one that fights with a fluidity, a precession, more Ali than Tyson. There is a darkness to the album, but that darkness also applies to the humour, check out "The Bitch + Her Greed", high maintenance, oh yes.

You can feel the punk spirit in this album, but again, more Strummer and The Clash, than Matlock and the Pistols. I like "Built By Angels", I like it a lot.

Neil King