Vinny Peculiar - Return of the Native (2018)

UK-based singer-songwriter Vinny Peculiar, aka Alan Wilkes, has been described by Uncut Magazine as ‘an
under-sung national treasure’. He grew up in Worcestershire and trained as a nurse before signing to Manchester cult label, Ugly Man Records (former home to Elbow).

He has since put out twelve albums of literate autobiographical pop music over a twenty- year career and toured with various bandmates including ex-members of The Smiths, OASIS, The Fall and Aztec Camera.
In the early 1970s, an inspired North Bromsgrove teacher encouraged Wilkes’ talent and desire to be a professional musician. That teacher was MOR pop singer Clifford T Ward who went on to sell a million copies of the single Gaye and was signed to John Peel’s Dandelion Records. Vinny pays tribute to him on the new album in the gently poignant Singing Schoolteacher.
Glam-rock-inspired opener The Grove & The Ditch is all local gang rivalries and Rocky Horror misfits. There’s also an effervescently-jangling homage to Malvern Winter Gardens, home to many a classic rock show of Vinny’s youth. Then poignant finale, Game Over, charting the end of a relationship.
Stuffed full of Peculiar’s trademark lyrical absurdity, Return of the Native might be the folk- pop record that Pulp never made - a warped storyteller’s record that will resonate with fans of Ray Davies, Eels and Robyn Hitchcock. Vinny Peculiar writes of transition, readjustment and re- engagement. He says, ‘it’s about the past and the present and how they collude and collide in the imagination.’

Tracklist:
01. Vinny Peculiar - The Grove & the Ditch
02. Vinny Peculiar - Malvern Winter Gardener
03. Vinny Peculiar - Blackpole
04. Vinny Peculiar - Golden City
05. Vinny Peculiar - Return of the Native
06. Vinny Peculiar - A Girl from Bromsgrove Town
07. Vinny Peculiar - The Singing Schoolteacher
08. Vinny Peculiar - Detroitwich
09. Vinny Peculiar - On Rainbow Hill
10. Vinny Peculiar - David Swan Riverman
11. Vinny Peculiar - Game Over