Sunlight To Blue...Blue To Blackness - The Durutti Column Album Review

The Durutti Column

Album Review

Vini Reilly has made dozens of beautiful and meticulous albums but courted little attention for his efforts. Often too ill to tour and a shy performer with a knack for simplicity, Reilly returns with an album of stripped-down fragments of instrumental melancholy and (mercifully) few vocal utterings. You see, Vini plays guitar like Rick Stein cooks fish, like Zidane plays football and Monet paints bridges but sings like Vanessa Feltz plays the flute - it is wrong.

The opener is a wonderful retread of the very rare song, "The Party" and sets the scene for minimal electronics and pretty plucked guitar with just a slightly forlorn dressing. Further in there is the almost bouncy version of "Never Known", a song that sparkled on the early Factory album "LC". Here it shuffles with an almost bogle sound and works simply because Vini sings without sounding too much like the last bus has been missed and the rain is getting wetter. "Ananda" is a gorgeous piano-led piece that was written by Poppy Morgan - what a talent. "Ged" is another shimmering piece with the slightest of touches and deft arrangement, in fact most of this album is quite stunning without shouting it loudly from the rooftops.

When Vini recorded for Factory back in the 80's and 90's, the boss Tony Wilson was desperate to stop him singing but his favourite artist stubbornly ignored the advice. Here he sings on 3 out of 11 and you wonder if Tony was right. I think he was - but only up to a point since some of Reilly's songs are just as emotional as his music on its own. If you haven't heard him before then start here - its his best for 7 years and reminiscent of the beauty displayed on his best albums, "Guitar & Other Machines", "Obey The Time" and "Vini Reilly".

Paul Pledger