SIR VINCENT LONE – Troubadour Heart (Kritik)

The review in Bluesnews no. 63 (February 2010) is by Johnny Andreassen (the attribution is not entirely certain because the OCR mixes the columns). Jackie Leven, it says, releases records from time to time under his own alias, Sir Vincent Lone. The first time, it was a way to give a musical outlet to the “politically and socially engaged” songs he had “at the bottom of the chest”: songs that were not so heavily produced, and that might get “completely different and more daring forms under acid bath and arrangement”, in a spirit he sometimes shares with his old partner David Thomas when they appear as Ubudoll. The name reflects their backgrounds in Doll by Doll and Pere Ubu respectively, but the similarities stop there – Ubudoll has never released a recording. “Fortunately Sir Vincent Lone has.”

Troubadour Heart is “a more personal version of Jackie Leven”. The cover shows the entrance door of The Troubadour, the London folk club to which Leven has returned for over thirty years – “the only coffee house in Earls Court from the fifties”. With “Rove on Wraith of Raith” as one of the finest songs, Sir Vincent Lone “begins more and more to resemble a stripped version of Jackie Leven's folk song and Celtic soul”; Scots are not known for American-inspired singer-songwriters or for gospel, but Leven “has never gone with the flock of his countrymen”. Leven is fascinated by eccentric songwriters, from Robert Fisher (Willard Grant Conspiracy) to Johnny Dowd; he has worked with Fisher, Dowd, Thomas and Mike Scott.

The verdict: “A fine record to be alone with for an hour or two. Quality time is what it's called, being alone with yourself.” You don't need to raise the door and widen the gate, for this artist reaches everyone who really listens. But in relation to the alias: “always choose a Jackie Leven album over a Sir Vincent Lone album”, should you stand with one in each hand and suffer the agony of choice, because Leven has a lower threshold for what he allows himself on the Sir Vincent Lone albums – “that has its charm too”.