THE VICAR - Songbook #1

The idea is tantalizing: a rock album where the absolute protagonists are oboe, viola, cello, flute, trumpet, trombone, piano, a scattering of acoustic bass, and two brief appearances of acoustic and electric guitar (the latter in the hands of the evergreen Robert Fripp), with no interference whatsoever from drums or percussion, as if sketching out the whole thing as a prototype of neo-symphonic music.

David Singleton (aka the Vicar? Or perhaps just the author of the pieces — the whole thing is shrouded in mystery) is a fearless musician, capable of bringing together the most ambitious pages of the Beatles' Sgt. Pepper and the most intricate schemes of progressive rock, defying the rules of minimalist avant-garde and lo-fi pop-rock alike.

Everything about "Songbook #1" is grandiloquent and sumptuous: the sound is powerful despite no drums or electric bass lending support, the melodies are sticky and memorable even as they come across as elusive or ambiguous.

It's no surprise that Robert Fripp welcomed David Singleton's ambitious creations onto his record label (Singleton is in fact a co-founder of Dgm). The term progressive reclaims its most authentic meaning here: the flexibility of the lyrical material and its interplay with other sources has the same visionary allure as Fripp's crimson kingdoms. What awaits you on "Songbook #1" is an unusual reading of rock culture — the fourteen tracks of the Vicar project would in any case delight any alternative pop band or devotee of folk-psychedelia, but "Songbook #1" mocks the record industry by also sidestepping the clichés of nonconformism.

The conventions that even progressive rock has never quite managed to shake off are shown the door here; the only way in is through the fruits of that expressive freedom of pop-rock so often flaunted but at times sacrificed to modernity: and so we get the Beatles of "Eleanor Rigby" and "She's Leaving Home", or the Penguin Cafè Orchestra of their debut on Obscure, and naturally the King Crimson of "Island" and the post-Roxy Music Brian Eno.

Freed from the tyranny of rhythm, the songs don't abide by the semantics of pop or singer-songwriter rock. Take "Man With A Woman On His Mind", for instance: horns and orchestra assemble a theatrical-symphonic vaudeville to depict a father-to-be's fear over his son's possible homosexual leanings, before giving way to the delicate romanticism of "Forever", where the search for earthly paradise coincides with life's small daily joys.

The most significant historical precedent seems to be the excellent "Apple Venus Vol 1" by Xtc: it's no coincidence that former leader Andy Partridge was one of the fans of the graphic-literary project "The Vicar Chronicles" from which the whole thing originated. The post-Beatles-esque "Inside My Head" and "In Dying Fire" wouldn't look out of place on any album by the Swindon imps.

There are no crumbs of alternative rock or grunge hints in the Vicar project, nothing aiming to flatter the listener with hybrid or facile solutions: from the very first notes of "Girl With The Sunshine", voices and orchestra are thrown in the listener's face with no self-indulgence whatsoever, and paradox becomes the only key to understanding it.

"Songbook #1" is an album in which the author's ego is sacrificed to the purity of art; "Three Sides Of Me" dares to cross the borders of operetta and musical theatre in the vein of the best Divine Comedy, while "Count Your Blessing" makes everything more melancholic and comforting with romantic orchestral nuances and the penetrating voice of Andy Yorke (Thom's brother and former leader of Unbelievable Truth).

Despite an apparent stylistic and creative uniformity, every track stands out thanks to the ever-careful songwriting: the beguiling beauty of "The Moony Song" stems from the perfect interlocking of voices and instruments, with an appearance by Robert Fripp as fleeting as it is brilliant, while "That Boy's Not Cool" takes an unexpected turn toward a hybrid soul sound with abrupt shifts in tone, embellished by a brilliant vocal performance from the forgotten Lewis Taylor.

The opening acoustic guitar notes of "Twenty Two" are just a momentary foothold before another surreal mini-symphony for piano and horns. More comforting and graceful, the acoustic "San Miguel" and the medieval folk of "Lonely Sunday" chip away at the self-containment that unmistakably characterizes "Songbook #1", a project that may irritate on first listen but will reward the stubborn and the bold with more than one satisfaction.

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10/01/2014