Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10
To appreciate the heroes of the counter culture movement is to know your own mind, it is too rail, no matter how many years after the end of the flower power bearers, the orators of good hope, and those who paved the way for us all to cut swathes through the squares and the rules of pre-war dogma, and argue that the world has become bland, dull, it has immersed itself in the safety of the beige, and it shows no sign of wanting to heave itself out of the mire of the deadly and the dreary tedium.
Yet there is always hope in the arts, for those who seek to colour outside of the lines, who refused to wear a uniform, purposely neglect singing the anthem instructed by lesser mins, are the ones who accept the individual, who exclaim the virtue of maverick and the free-spirited misfit, and with notebook in hand, and the words of Ginsberg running through the minds, so How I learned To Love The Freaks becomes a willing mantra of its own splendid accord.
Vinny Peculiar is the artist you know you need, a voice in the head that you cannot live without, and when he places the listener right dead centre of the moment, of being the witness to his misgivings, his apologies, his openness of happenstance that has made his life more memorable, then the tales he informs and sings with delight are ones to be forever held as prizes. No longer keepsakes, these are gifts of language, these are affectionate contributions to the subjects of display.
Inspired by, and arguably a love letter to the hippy culture and the recognition of a new way of thinking that damned the stringent and boldly stagnant past, a revolution in one album is captured and framed by this seismic and lovingly created album.
The musical autobiographical persuasion is one that cannot be beaten, and like for example Jarvis Cocker, it is the weave between the structure that catches the ear and the eye that is celebrated, and as tracks such as Going To San Francisco, Ashram Curtains, Peter And The Rainbow, the superb Death Of The Counterculture, and the album title track of How I Learned To Love The Freaks with its sentimental admonishment and final understanding of acceptance, what is revealed once again is a mind that is always on full alert, a lyrical poet of observation, and how good it feels to be permitted to be in attendance of its power.
A wonderful return for a piercing intellect ass he revels in releasing an album of dramatic swashbuckling pleasure.
Vinny Peculiar releases How I Learned To Love The Freaks on September 15th.
Ian D. Hall