Has it really been a month since the official release of Vinny Peculiar’s latest long-playing work of art? Well, I never. And that’s rather spot on seeing as I had an advance copy long before that release date, but… ‘well, I never’ quite found the time to spread the word, until now. Still, there’s that old chestnut of an adage about the best things coming to those who wait… and it is rather apt that this belated review is for a record called Things Too Long Left Unsaid.

The LP, his 15^th in total and out on his own Shadrack & Duxbury Records label, is described by Alan Wilkes, the talented singer-songwriter behind Vinny Peculiar, as ‘a retrospective collection of older, unreleased songs written over a ten-year period (2011 -2021) that never quite made it on to past albums,’ its 10 songs ‘re-made and re-imagined’ alongside Dave Draper (Dodgy, The Wildhearts), ‘recorded in an attic on Rainbow Hill, Worcester’ and at Mayfield Road Studios, Salford, and The Old Cider Press, Evesham (with its rather lovely LP artwork down to another long-term VP associate, Paul Cliff).

So without further ado (and there’s been a fair bit of positive ado about the record so far, from critics and fans alike), here’s my take on the latest batch of Wilkes-penned wonders, from ‘The End’ to the finish, so to speak.

This time, the main man (vocals, electric, acoustic, slide and bass guitar, piano, keys and drum programming) co-produces with Dave Draper (additional guitar, bass and drums, final edits), with backing vocals from Alan’s daughter Leah Wilkes and Seb Walch. And I’m still trying to work out if it’s genius that the reflective gem opening the record is called ‘The End’… not least as it could easily be a lighter-waving set finale.

‘Next time we’ll get it right, and we’ll hit the big time on a Saturday night.

But this is the end, this is the end, here’s to a new beginning,

Here’s to a brand-new innings, here’s to a new way of living.’

There’s a Richard Hawley-like quality here, and as for that song title, I wonder what Jim Morrison would make of it. And I don’t mean James Robert, of Carter the Unstoppable Sex Machine fame… although there’s a modern-day solo artist ploughing similar well-observed, skilfully executed songwriting furrows… if that’s not too mixed a metaphor (it clearly is, on reflection).

Talking of Saturday night fervour (I know, from furrows to fervour in barely a couple of lines, pop kids!), there are elements of ‘Saturday Night’s Alright for Fighting’ on ‘Shenstone College Disco’, my first contender for best song on the record. More accurately, it’s more a case of ‘Saturday Night’s Alright For Vinny’, and I reckon this glam rocker of a song would have fit rather seamlessly on 2023’s wonderful How I Learned To Love the Freaks LP.

On this occasion, our awkward hero gets off with an exotic arty type, the colourful detail in the words typically evocative and Vinny-esque.

‘And the girl, she slowly wakes up and says, ‘oh, I feel a bit rough,

There’s cat food in the pantry, you seem a little more alive than me.’

It comes with Pete Shelley-like delivery and Ray Davies-worthy storytelling, the listener transported back to days of yore when ‘Three Times a Lady’ inevitably vied for the last dance smooch spot and no discerning lover would have headed into the bedroom without protection – a copy of Astral Weeks on the stereo in this case.

There’s an almost-trademark VP twist in the tale too, and it’s one of those songs where I feel the need to ask its author, ‘Did that really happen?’ It certainly feels real. Perhaps we need Mr Wilkes as a regular panellist on a musicians’ version of Would I Lie to You? Perhaps I should pitch the idea to Zeppotron (which sounds like a line from a Vinny song, come to think of it).

And while Robert Forster memorably sang of Sydney musician and journalist Frank Brunetti in The Go-Betweens’ ‘Darlinghurst Nights’, Vinny namechecks US poet and painter Laurence Ferlinghetti with similar verve. As with a lot of his material there’s a little Pulp here too, and I love the way Vinny adds that grounded last line, ‘It’s in Bromsgrove’.

I mentioned a Reg Dwight rocker before, and soon the Pride of Pinner (he did do The Lion King soundtrack, after all) gets a mention in ‘Sentimental Music’, Vinny telling a Pulp-tastic tale of a woman who loves a bit of ‘guilty pleasure on the hi-fi, easy come and easy go…’

‘She loves sentimental music, listens to it all day long
She’s got Elton on the stereo, and he’s playing her song.’

Yes, we’re back at Nostalgia Central, listening for pleasure, with another killer hook… this song definitely one for the festival set. I could hear Coldplay or Snow Patrol belting this out at Glasto in late afternoon sunshine. And I shouldn’t imagine Vinny would be too upset by that prospect. It may help pay for a new extension at Peculiar Towers.

Then we have the absolute delight that is ‘Love at the Garden Centre’, featuring so many great lines, in a Brel-liant ditty where it seems we have Jarvis Cocker appropriating Leonard Cohen and Scott Walker.

‘She takes hold of his hand and says, ‘Beware the hemlock.’

If that was the only line that grabbed me, I’d have been sold, but again we have another great romance that we’re invested in from the start… big time.

‘At the garden centre early in the morning, ghosts in the greenhouse float above the seed trays.

Wendy’s at the sprinkler, watering and tending, seedlings in transition welcoming the sunshine of their love.’

How about that for painting a picture, eh? And that’s before we even reach the last track on side one, ‘All I Want For Xmas is a Gibson Flying V’, the only one I knew as I split the cellophane on this mighty disc.

For those who missed out last December, what we get here is a ‘time-travelled Vinny Peculiar Christmas song set in the hallowed era of the guitar hero; a 1970s teenage lament celebrating the rock ‘n’ roll allure of Gibson’s most iconic guitar, seen through the dreams of a starstruck schoolboy.’ A Christmas song added to an album released the following summer? Yes, maybe, but it works so well here, the time that has elapsed since my last airing adding a freshness, aided by Leah’s sweet backing vocal.

‘Noddy tops the hit parade but the girls all love Jim Lea,
I’ve a Levi’s denim jacket and I’ve just discovered Free’

He certainly gets away with including it. And while first time around it didn’t really get a chance to bother the charts, just be reminded that it took Wham!  37 years to top the UK charts with ‘Last Christmas’, so surely I can hold out hope that Vinny will finally get a festive hit with this gem. And that Glen Campbell-like guitar lick subtly woven within works so well here.

On to side two, track one, and we find ‘Fine Art’, my next contender for album highlight… in fact contender for album track of 2025, a good old-fashioned rocker in this case.

‘She studied for a fine art degree in a redbrick university, she said, ‘Oh wow, is that really me?’

I was working on a building site, I’d joined a band, we were doing alright, sessions on the local BBC.

She drew a picture of the Queen, naked in the bath for all to see – It’s hanging on my wall,

It remains a talking point when my friends come over to call.’

Is that Billy Gibbons I see stepping out of the wings to guest on this around the minute and a half mark, that Vinny Peculiar festival headline slot finally calling? And yet there it is, our dream bubble as good as popped by that telling last line, our hero clearly feeling out of his depth.

‘She was a well to do girl, same from a different world… I never stood a chance.’

This could have all gone a bit Crazy Horse in the end, and that would have been great. What we get instead though is… well, more cowbell… a whole load more cowbell. It must have been milking time as the band slowly (ahem) steered themselves away from that festival field. Lovely.

There’s a little more of that ol’ Smiths-like VP whimsy in the life-affirming ‘Songwriters of the World’, not least in the title itself, another perceptive song about, erm, songwriting. And Al’s penned a fair few of those down the years. Follow the link for details of his songwriting master classes… maybe.

‘Nailing the melody and honing the words.

Well, I think you really ought to know I’m the second greatest songwriter the world will ever know.’

As the man himself puts it, sometimes it seems, ‘All the good ideas have been used up,’ and yet he remains an optimist, grabbing inspiration where he can, adding, ‘But no one’s telling me a song can never change the world.’

I love a song where other acts get namechecks, and Mr Wilkes (I can’t write that without picturing Woolpack barman Amos Brearley and his boss… but that’s another story) has become rather adept at all that. I’ve said before The Grateful Dead seem to get a lot of mentions, and I may soon have to add fellow early AW influence Wishbone Ash to that. And where The Chesterfields pulled off namechecking so beautifully on 2022’s ‘Our Songbird Has Gone’ on the subject of indie royalty, it seems Vinny has taken another angle.

Paul Simon, David Bowie, Joni Mitchell and me,

Bill Nelson, Carole King, Paddy McAloon and me,

Ray Davies, David Byrne, Ian Hunter and me,

Roy Harper, Marc Bolan, Noddy, and Jimmy Lea!’ 

Wow, there you go, a second nod to the mighty Neville John Holder and James Whild Lea in the space of three songs (after ‘Gibson Flying V’). Respect.

I get the feeling that ‘Glam Rock Graveyard’ is another that could easily have slipped on to the Love Freaks LP. Perhaps it could still feature on the 10th anniversary deluxe edition in 2033. Or maybe it just slipped my mind that it was included on the B-side of ‘Hippie Kids’. Y’know, that one-off VP 12” on denim-coloured vinyl that came with a specially monogrammed phial of patchouli oil.

It’s the heaviest of the components here, the subject matter clearly fitting that concept, Alan looking on, wryly, at rock stars, politicos and what-have-you, delivering with the kind of ‘impassioned as I get’ fire Roddy Frame gave us on Aztec Camera’s ‘How It Is’. 

‘Freedom is a construct rarely achieved
Governments tell lies people are deceived
Artists fight back but nobody cares
And they sell out after a couple of years’

Then, conversely, we have ‘The Man Who Loved You’, and this one gets better and better with every listen, I’d say. It’s a shame the afore-mentioned Glen Campbell’s not around to cover it (having no doubt first heard Travis’ cover version, Fran Healey and co. taking this Peculiar ditty and doing their own thing on the reimagining front, ultimately landing their first top-five hit since 2001’s ‘Sing’. Or did I dream that as well?

Wistful is the word, the sun about to dip below the horizon, smiles on faces, the world somehow a far better place.

‘You can say hello to my goodbye song,

Like you saw it coming all day long, when I wrote it for you’ 

And then we’re away with ‘Fluffy Kitten’, sweeping David Bowie-like choruses over a Wolf Alice construct (the answer song to their own ‘Fluffy’, I’d suggest), for a rather chillingly perceptive number about the sad old world of social media, laid bare right there. The Loneliness of the Long Distance Viral Post, if you like, the dry ice clawing (rather apt, that) and choking at times.

‘Next day I posted video of a Dachshund in a waistcoat, behind the wheel of a toy car.,

And I’m sharing it with you now, hoping you do the same’

Fingers crossed everybody… fingers crossed this one goes properly insane.’

In a sense, he’s managed to lose the warmth of the previous number, but it’s a number to behold all the same, soundtracking the 21^st century hyper (low on) reality cyber-world in a nutshell. Bravo, VP. Here’s to the next record… no pressure.

There are several past Vinny Peculiar-related feature-interviews and reviews on these pages, not least a Manchester Castle Hotel live review and WriteWyattUK lowdowns on the Love Freaks and Artists Only LPs, set around interviews with Alan Wilkes.

Things Too Long Left Unsaid is available in all digital formats and on CD and vinyl, with further details about the album and its predecessors, plus forthcoming live shows, via www.vinnypeculiar.com

Vinny adds, ‘I’ll be playing a few gigs in the coming months, some band shows and some solo/duo events, with full details on my gig page. If you’re thinking of coming along – and of course I’d really love you to – please book as early as possible. Every little helps. 
 
‘I also have new songs ready for a pre-Christmas release, an EP of extra-terrestrial lullabies, including the next single, ‘Katy Perry in Space’, a song that compares and contrasts the vanity of space tourism with, well, real life…’