Robert Vincent ★★★★
Barriers
THIRTY TIGERS. CD/DL/LP
Merseyside singer-songwriter accentuates the personal on fourth album.
Crosby-born Robert Vincent might be more of a household name if he hadn’t released 2020’s superb In This Town You’re Owned album just as Covid hit. The record nevertheless won acclaim and awards, but left Vincent far outside the mainstream, like a Liverpudlian Ron Sexsmith, whose music this latest LP bears more than a passing resemblance to. Where that last album dealt with fractured politics and social disintegration, Barriers is all about the personal: the problems, issues, guilt and hope that come with lowering those titular barriers rather than erecting them. Tracks such as The Insider (with a video starring actor and Vincent superfan David Morrissey), The Hard Way, where Vincent truly opens up his phenomenal vocal chords, and Lost Souls, with more than a hint of Little Feat’s chicken grease blues, should justly go some way towards restoring his career arc.