Refreshingly Addictive
Blatantly refusing to follow their London peers, Vincent Vincent And The Villains have not so much followed their own path but instead torn up the blueprints and laid a whole new foundation to tred their rockabilly music to. You see whilst everyone else have been greasing themselves down in order to squeeze into those pair of eye watering jeans or rushing round Topshop a vain desperate hope to look like the next ‘it’ band before resembling a Saturday sales assistant, one London band have instead been pouring over a bygone era, delving into that forgotten decade of the 1950s when rock and roll was all the rage, quiffs were essential and the strongest drink all the cool kids downed was a milkshake. Yes, Vincent and his gang aren’t like the other kids and if you can resist the urge to scoff at their love of music your parents danced to then you may just discover a whole new refreshing world where your eyes need never water again because of some trousers.
Crammed with vivid story telling tracks, ‘Gospel Bombs’ breathes life into old school rockabilly as vibrant doses of skiffle sets out to snare and entrap all. Blasting all in their path with short, sharp, snappy tracks, Vincent Vincent And The Villains debut album will not fail in painting a dynamic picture as the London band offer tales of love affairs gone wrong, naming all from Adam and Eve to Bonnie and Clyde in the venom doused hue of the sultry ‘Sins Of Love (Wah Do)’ that comes with a gallon of cynicism, right down to meeting your dream girl in an aisle at Tescos in the catchy wit of ‘Pretty Girl’. Injecting every beat with a barrage of jerky guitars and a wave of irresistible layered harmonies, VVATV capture the exuberance of adolescence strangely laced with a dark helping of melodrama that will intrigue and attract. In ‘Cinema’, the quartet depict a sense of sinister misery as the detailed laden lyrics tell of watching the world revolve around the movie theatre, given extra dramatic effect with Vincent’s scarily foreboding vocals spitting with hate and anguish over his life. Indeed VVATV manage to capture a hint of theatrics in all their tracks from the swinging maricichi of ‘Beast’ through to the painful fury of ‘Telephone’ and even managing to surface in the contagiously exhilarating ball of energy that is ‘On My Own’ there’s just something captivatingly refreshing about ‘Gospel Bombs’ and the intense detail that oozes from each track.
Whilst VVATV maybe dipping into a sound that was more at home 50 odd years ago, their debut album exhumes so much energy, vitality and fun that it manages to be refreshingly addictive and a welcome change to the sound alike bands trying to copy one another. So go on, buck the trend and let some good old fashioned storytelling back into your life, if nothing else it will stop you looking like Topshop mannequin gone AWOL.