Kevin Coyne - Case History (Expanded Edition) (2024)

Coyne's first solo recording is a triumphant, if occasionally bleak, look at life's outsiders. Using his time as social worker in a government-run mental hospital as a basis for his narratives, Coyne deals with issues of intense alienation, indifference, substance abuse (to which he was no stranger), and mental instability in a world that would rather forget these people existed, and a labyrinthine governmental bureaucracy that often denied their humanity. This is not a happy record, and is only infrequently hopeful, but it's never cynical, and neither does Coyne indulge in glib condescension. He acts as a subjective documentarian, an advocate for a group of people who desperately need one. Reissued on CD with extra tracks by the import label Dandelion/See For Miles in 1994.

Review by John Dougan