WORCESTER: Marrs Bar

Thursday 5th March, 2020

8:00pm

Event information

Singer-Songwriter and Poet Vinny Peculiar [aka Alan Wilkes] grew up in Worcestershire and trained as a nurse before signing to Manchester cult label Ugly Man records [former home to Elbow]. He’s since put out twelve albums of literate autobiographical pop music over a twenty-year career and has regularly toured band, solo and duo shows.

Variously described as – ‘an under sung national treasure’ [UNCUT] – ‘a warm hearted Morrissey’ [Q Magazine] and ‘the missing link between Jarvis Cocker and Roger McGough’ [Irish Times] past work associations include Bill Drummond [KLF], Luke Haines and Jah Wobble [PIL] and his various bands have included ex members of The Smiths, OASIS, Aztec Camera & The Fall. He’s also written and recorded as Parlour Flames, the band he formed in 2013 with ex OASIS rhythm guitarist Bonehead. 2019 has seen VP touring with The Wedding Present, Duke Special & WrecklessEric.

New album WHILE YOU STILL CAN is a politicized hard rock affair and comes out 28.10.19 with band tour dates in support…

https://youtu.be/F_B9pJknBoo

Press notes n quotes….

‘If Tony Hancock had made pop records, they’d have sounded like this’ UNCUT MAGAZINE

Part Pulp, part Kinks, and very much part Peculiar, this is observational, punk-tinged songwriting at its best. HOT PRESS ****

Wildly witty with abject sadness and pathos in swathes, like a warm-hearted Morrissey no less’ INDEPENDENT

‘The missing link between Jarvis Cocker and poet Roger McGough and some of the wittiest lyrics this side of Wreckless Eric’ IRISH TIMES

‘A strange brave captivating album, matched by fascination, dark humor and warmth’ DAILY MIRROR

This fifteen-track album from the Salford based singer songwriter is frankly, unmissable. A real joy. AMERICANA- UK

Crashing poppily through Vinnys world of nostalgia and insight every song stuffed to the gills with melody and eccentricity, clever, funny and wonderfully weird’ R2 MAGAZINE

‘A well-measured introduction to an under sung national treasure’ UNCUT MAGAZINE

more info www.vinnypeculiar.com

Born in Vienna, Austria, but based in Canterbury, England, singer-songwriter Robert Rotifer has put out 10 albums since he move to this country 23 years ago, some as solo records, like his most recent double album “About us/They Don’t Love You Back”, which combined a finger-picking solo acoustic LP with a 77 minute epic on experiencing B*x*t as a resident foreigner, “Über uns” (2017, so for his only record in his native German language) or “Not Your Door” (2016), some with his band Rotifer, such as 2011’s Wreckless Eric-produced “The Hosting Couple” (on Edwyn Collins’ label AED Records) or “The Cavalry Never Showed Up” (2013).

He has been played in the live bands of Robert Forster, Pete Astor, Louis Philippe and John Howard, which gives you some idea of where his own style is coming from.

Rotifer has a habit of making unusual lyrics and chord changes sound easy. He paints (almost) all of his own covers, and sometimes draws elaborate animated videos, like the one for the “The Frankfurt Kitchen”, a paean to Austria’s first female architect Margarete Schütte-Lihotzky, which was exhibited in New York’s Museum of Modern Art and acquired for their collection.

A few choice quotes:

“i think your record is [records are] unique in its conscientious clarity,without being simple: i.e. repays really careful listening. a rare intelligence i think, with the advantage of you starting from such an unusual angle“ (Robert Wyatt, on a postcard)

“Rotifer’s songs are crammed with witty, sardonic lyrics.” (Alastair McKay, Uncut, on “The Cavalry Never Showed Up”)

“The reason why these songs are so valuable is that they open a little door on something else…It’s those literate bands that turn you on to stuff. It just makes the world seem more interesting.” (Dorian Lynskey, The Guardian, on “The Hosting Couple”)

“Robert Rotifer couldn’t sound more English if he tried. He specialises in Ray Davies-style narrative songs, delivered in a pleasingly flat Robyn Hitchcock voice, with heart-wrenching chord changes pitched somewhere between XTC and the Beatles.” (John Lewis, Uncut, on “Not Your Door”)

www.robertrotifer.co.uk