The term ‘cottage industry’ has long since made it into public domain where DIY endeavour is concerned, but Stephen Hartley is surely the man to bring a new area of independent enterprise – ‘terrace house industry’ – to the fore.
Having earned his stripes in Punk Rock history as guitarist (‘Sage’) in Burnley’s eminently daft Notsensibles (responsible for the immortal ‘I’m in Love with Margaret Thatcher’), Hartley has continued his defiantly independent stance with his killer power trio VINCENT BLACK LIGHTNING. They record and mix their songs in the back room of Hartley’s terraced house in Lancashire and he then individually stamps and hand-prints all the CD and album covers himself. In a world obsessed with Spotify, i-Tunes and download speeds, such an apparently antiquated approach both reads and sounds like a breath of fresh air.
Since the Notsensibles’ heyday circa the turn of the ‘80s, Hartley has played in a series of independently-minded local bands, honing his minimalist guitar, bass and drums approach, as well as busking the streets solo for five years, getting stuck into an engineering apprenticeship, attending medical school and becoming chairman of an allotment association. He’s never had a record deal and it’s only since he got together with drummer Bish Davies and bassist Karl Eden (recently replaced by Lee Jones) to form VINCENT BLACK LIGHTNING that he began to record the vast catalogue of songs he’d been stockpiling over the years.
They began tumbling out on 2009’s ‘Songs from the Underbelly (Part One)’. VBL’S ‘white’ album with the band’s smart little silver woodlouse insignia also adorning the sleeve, it was a belter of a debut with off-kilter songs like ‘You’re a Lonely Man Stan’, ‘The Biz’ and ‘Restless’ brilliantly aligning Hartley’s laconic wit to the band’s vintage analogue garage raunch.
The good news is that its’ erstwhile follow-up, ‘Songs from the Underbelly (Part Two)’ is arguably better still. The band’s ‘black’ album (with the woodlouse still present, if a little more obscured), it’s another absolute corker, with the boys making like an unholy alliance of The Fall, Half Man Half Biscuit, The Stooges and The Pirates while Hartley rants about everything from bland council tax officials to Karaoke and Twitchers clubs. Y’know, the IMPORTANT stuff that gets on your wick from one week to the next.
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Highlights are plentiful and frequently hilarious. The wonderfully scabrous ‘Gastronomy’ gives the poncey gits on ‘Masterchef’ a bloody good kicking, ‘Rolling’ is powered by a cyclical, perpetual motion riff that burrows deep into your psyche and on ‘Fools’ (“mutton dressed as ham/ a wolf in leopardskin underpants getting it while he can”) they slow it down and get all creepy and atmospheric on our ass.
While full-tilt garage-rock assaults are never too far away, VBL have plenty of additional strings to their bow, however. ‘I’ll Meet You at the Bar’ rides a surprisingly funky groove, while the playful ‘Boyfriend’ has a jazzy, knock-about 50s Rock’n’Roll vibe and the amusing, anti-pretension rant ‘Nosers on the Posers’ (“they’re all loving the smell of their own farts”) is a dark, skiffle-style workout with Hartley’s lead guitar sounding like a bizarre, but brilliant mix of John Perry and Bert Weedon.
Such is the level of inspiration going down that merely choosing favourite tracks becomes this reviewer’s primary objective. ‘Baa Baa Rainbow Sheep’ is surely a contender, with its’ spot on anti-PC invective (“common sense is now outlawed”), although it’s run close by the foul-mouthed rant of ‘Stop!’ (“Stop... being a cunt!”). The record’s one ‘cover’ - The Notsensibles ‘Sick of Being Normal’ - is, in spirit at least, perhaps the album’s mission statement, with Hartley railing against mediocrity (“my life’s an empty space/ I’m just another non-entity”) over the music’s bitter thrash.
Surrounded by an industry cloaked in grey conformism, Vincent Black Lightning have retreated to their terraced house home base and fashioned a second Molotov cocktail of bile, barbed wit and killer tunes. It's a pleasure to heave at the selected authoritarian target of your choice, so light up and aim with care.
Eli Records online
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