Choices Under Pressure By Peter Blegvad

Don't fence him in

In the UK we don’t really know what to do with artists who transgress the generic boundaries we like to corral them in. For example, not only has polymath Peter Blegvad, been a member of Faust, Slapp Happy, Henry Cow and the Golden Palaminos, but has loaned his talents to the likes of Andy Partridge, John Zorn and ex-Zep John Paul Jones.

He also happens to be the author of a long running cartoon strip for a national newspaper in the UK (the much missed Leviathan) and can credibly add painter, polemicist, lecturer, broadcaster and poet to his CV when he feels showing off a little bit.

And if all of that wasn’t enough he’s been quietly writing a bunch of witty, incisive, off-the-wall songs for several years.

Choices Under Pressure gathers together some of the best of them plus two new songs together in one place to give them an unplugged-style treatment.

With subtle support from Danny Thompson (acoustic bass), John Greaves (electric bass) and Jakszyk’s discrete embellishments on guitar, keyboards and percussion, Blegvad’s Dylanesque drawl of a delivery become the focus of the album. And rightly so. Listening to some his earlier albums with their dated or dodgy productions, Blegvad was sometimes in danger of being lost in the mix.

"Daughter" neatly expresses both the joy and the fear contained in talking to your children of child-rearing “Everything I say she takes to heart/Everything she takes she takes apart”, whilst Scarred For Life evokes the deadly attraction of a destructive relationship. “We Walked arm and arm in madness and every little breeze/whispered of the secret love we had for our disease.”

"King Strut" offers an extraordinary tale about a mysterious Kane-like character underpinned by Danny Thompson’s swaggering bass and an unrelenting hookline. Standing like a TV reporter on the edge of some great event the singer deadpans “Now a man without a moral code is just an appetite/King Strut was on a diet growing luminous by eating light.”

The clarity of Jakko Jakszyk’s sparse production serves Blegvad’s idiosyncratic and eccentric stories especially well. The heart-breaking tale of "Gold" is left to camp-fire guitars to gently pick through the haunting melody whilst the bigger guns of drums and a rolling electric bass line are fired off on "God Detector", making it the most uptempo track on the album and the nearest you’ll get to rock.

Here a chancer searches for the divine in a house of ill-repute. The results are touching and funny – a combination which Blegvad has off to a tee.

This is a beautifully warm album and a superb celebration of a genuine original talent who refuses to be penned in.

Stand out track: "Gold"