No one does spoken word narratives like Paul Rooney. Now, the creator of masterpieces like Lucy Over Lancashire and Lost High Street is back with an album that reaches into that method, explores it, plays with it, dissects it and ultimately leaves with a ten-track album that, as has become the case with Rooney's work, doesn't sound quite like anything else.
I may have said this before but I'm going to say it now anyway: the Liverpudlian's art resembles that of James Joyce in the sense that both only produced masterpieces. I keep fearing the day when Paul Rooney's work begins to dip below the almost impossibly high standard he's set but it's still never shown any sign of arriving. I'm beginning to be convinced it never will.
A track like Write Here Write Now plays with the idea of narrative the way Joyce played with the interplay between language and consciousness. The protagonist journeys down the M6 while a mysterious author writes up his life as a medical spy thriller. Perhaps the greatest achievement is none of this ends up sounding too high brow or in danger of disappearing into its own nether regions. Rooney's work continues to be an accessible listening experience despite refusing to make any concessions to commercialism. The title track of the album features, among other things, a postman called Franz and a self-loathing tree. There's much to entertain here as well as enthrall.
In my Dandelion Radio show this month (hear it on-demand here), I'm featuring To Havana Have Not, which originated as a soundtrack composed back in 2005. Another thing that's great the way Rooney digs back into his own history in this way, recycling previous adventures and breathing new life into them. It's almost Proustian, but I realise I'm in danger of over-intellectualising the whole thing when what you really want to do know is whether it's a good listen or not.
To be clear, then: yet it is. A bloody good listen.
Get it here.
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