Billy Jenkins: True Love Collection
Author: Andy Robson
View record and artist detailsRecord and Artist Details
Musicians: |
Django Bates (p, ky) |
Label: |
VOTP |
Magazine Review Date: |
March/2017 |
RecordDate: |
1998 |
It's yesterday once more… the Man from Lewisham may currently be enjoying an episode of silence but here's a world of sound from Jenkins, 1998 vintage. The songs are classic 1960s/1970s cuts, all reimagined by a lustrous band of what were then young tyros. For Jenkins these tunes are the soundtrack of his youth and, even if we loathed The Carpenters' ‘Yesterday Once More’, songs like that and ‘Mellow Yellow’ somehow imprinted themselves on the DNA of a generation. Each song is pre-ambled by an ‘Invocation’, a musical meander toward (or possibly away) from the melody, creating a context that you can read as ironic postmodern deconstruction or a bit of a larf, neither or both: either way they give Ballamy in particular the chance to strut and blast, usually over Django's Messiaen-dripped soarings. In serene contrast Tobin summons the timeless spirit of The Ladybirds. However you read it, there could be a clue in the title: True Love Collection can only work because, at heart, Jenkins, who's pathologically incapable of bullshit, has a real affection, a real caring for the music. More, more, more please.
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