Monday, August 01, 2005


Biography of a First Son
Anthony Reynolds, former singer of the band Jack, has never left music behind. Unfortunately, many of the Jack fans have likely moved on from Jack's orch-pop style, as Reynolds' solo albums don't seem to get much of any press, though Jack earned a bit of coverage in the mid-90s. And even though I own all of Jack's music, and most of Jacques CDs (Jacques being the Jack offshoot where Reynolds and a few others would work with other established, non-Jack artists), I've never had the desire to pick up Reynolds' solo work. Maybe the tortured artists lyrics don't have the same impact now that they once did. Or maybe it's the fact that without a large band supporting him, I realized that his voice really wasn't as perfect as it once seemed. I'm not really sure.
Despite this, it seems that Reynolds has not kept busy with music alone. Instead, the artist has also released a book of poetry titled These Roses Taste Like Ashes. But the most exciting news is that Reynolds has just finished a biography of the Walker Brothers, one of the major influences on Jack and all other orch-pop groups. The book, which will be released on Helter Skelter in the UK, is described as tracing the career of the Walkers from their beginning through the solo careers when they disbanded. However, from the short write-up of the book on the Helter Skelter site, it appears that Scott Walker will receive most of the focus.
I hope the book doesn't stop at a certain date, but takes the reader to Walker's most recent (and possibly best) effort, Tilt. So while Reynolds music may not hold many people's interest anymore, hopefully his writing will win over some new fans, and hopefully this book will be as excellent as its subject deserves.
Anyone interested in Reynolds' poetry or other writings should go here.
posted by Jonathan

1 Comments:

At 6/18/2006 02:16:00 p.m., Anonymous Anonymous said...

Hello,

I'm writing from Italy.
The name of the band is Hollowblue. I'm the singer and author.
We released our debut at the end of 2004 ("what you left behind"). On the album there's a special collaboration with Anthony Reynolds from the UK bamd JACK. We did the song "io bevo" and the video clip of the song.
We received a lot of good reviews in Italy and something in UK, USA, France, Sweden...
Here an example from "the big take over" magazine:

The Big TakeOver Magazine (issue 56) Spring 2005
by Michael Pearlstein
Italian five-piece band Hollowblue deliver on this poignant, albeit short debut. Gianluca Maria Sorace has an excellent, deep voice, well suited to the passionate ballads he sings on this six-tracks EP, all of them standouts, and all of them on the dark side. Think Tindersticks/Nick Cave/The National, but much more centered around the vocals and less on instrumental bombast. Hollowblue keep it minor key with light strings and barely-there percussion. Everything is perfectly understated, allowing Sorace to convey the bulk of emotion via his expert crooning. Anthony Reynolds (ex-Jack/Jacques) delivers an absolutely killer guest vocal on "io bevo" ("I drink") catapulting this into must-buy territory.

At the moment we are recording our second album (11 new songs) titled "Stars are crashing (in my backyard)" that will be released on Midfinger Records at the end of the year.

In the meantime our label (www.midfinger.net) recently released an ep on line. Four rough songs... demos we recorded live in our rehearsal room and that anticipate the new album. Just an introduction.

If you think, you should register and log in in the label site... then click on hollowblue ep in the home page. A minisite will open. You'll find some loops, lyrics, the printable cover and, in the "download the ep" page, the mp3s.

This is an ep on line but I think it could be reviewed as a real album.

If you want to listen to some of our previous songs and have a look at the video we did with Reynolds you can ceck our Myspace page www.myspace.com/hollowblue

Here mellowdoubt.blogspot.com/ a recent english interview
here our video with Anthony Reynolds http://www.yos.it/it/video/clip_view.asp?id=697


Thank you very much for the attention.

Best regards
Gianluca Maria Sorace

 

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