‘Short stories, tall tales’ gets 5* review!

RnR Magazine gives the new Rob Boughton album a great review

ROB BOUGHTON

*****

Short Stories, Tall Tales

(Rush) www.rushmusic.co.uk

If I was one of those rock journalists who, from the mid-1960s onwards, put forward someone-or-other as the ‘Bob Dylan’ of a particular year, my choice for 2019 would be Rob Boughton – except mesmeric ugliness defers to a clear and flexible English baritone, and the self-production criterion involves building up of instrumental layers and, where necessary, Brian Wilson-esque chorale in the solitude of a home studio. Such skills are the consequence of decades spent springing for the commercial jugular before he dropped everything and hit out for himself. Indeed, during the three years since a maiden solo release, Time and Emotion, Boughton has applied a natural lyrical flair and gift for unexpected melodic twists-and-turns to creating from scratch nine items that roll off his tongue without pomp or affectation, whether the doomy ‘Raise A Glass’ waltz or the bright-and-breezy concluding half of ‘Insomnia’ which sandwich autobiographical ‘The Breeze Of Freedom’ (inhaled after enduring the rigours of boarding school) and eminently danceable ‘The Gunslingers’ (concerning 1960s guitar heroes who captured his liberated imagination in London clubland) plus the disparate likes of downbeat ‘Late Afternoon Conversation’ and irresistibly catchy ‘Bear In The Woods’.