Pete Atkin - Driving Through Mythical America (Reissue) (1971/2009)

Pete Atkin (born 22 August 1945) is a British singer-songwriter and radio producer notable for his 1970s musical collaborations with Clive James and for producing the BBC Radio 4 series This Sceptred Isle.

Released just a year after Atkin's debut, Driving Through Mythical America represented a quantum leap in terms of both words and music. Gone were the whimsical folk-pop trappings of Beware of the Beautiful Stranger, replaced by an altogether tougher sound that for the first time signaled that Atkin was looking to join the big boys with electric guitars. The change was appropriate, for Clive James' lyrics had also moved on. Now he was demonstrating his belief, expressed in an article for Creem magazine, that there really was no limit to what you could write songs about. The title track is a verbal tour de force, name-checking every modern American myth from Gatsby to Bogey to point up the reality of a nation whose police had recently slain four students at Kent State University. This is language in the hands of a master stylist of the kind that is all too rarely drawn to the task of writing rock lyrics, and Atkin's melodies complement every syllable. "Sunlight Gate" is a solemn meditation on the effects of war on the "heroes" who make it home, while the altogether sprightlier "Thief in the Night" looks at the love-hate relationship between guitarist and guitar. There is characteristically wry humor in the music biz satire of "Practical Man," while the tender ballad "The Flowers and the Wine" ended up being covered by Irish crooner Val Doonican -- thus earning the pair more than the rest of their catalog put together. Arrangements are sturdy and unfussy throughout, with "Sunlight Gate" in particular benefiting from a somber brass arrangement redolent of Gil Evans. The epic "No Dice," however, demonstrated that Atkin's distinctive vocal style -- measured, warm, and undemonstrative -- is not an ideal instrument for the histrionics of rock.