Sir Vincent Lone - Troubadour Heart

Jackie Leven kills off his musical pseudonym Sir Vincent Lone and consequently produces a ‘posthumous’ album that’s actually better than the kind of retrospective albums released when songwriters actually kick the bucket. The stripped-down production suits Lone’s backstory of having been a regular at the Troubadour Coffee House, London: Strolling Down The Highway displaying an authentic ‘café blues performer’ vibe, all plucked harmonics and fingerpicked twiddles. However, it’s on the track Rove On Wraith Of Raith that Leven surpasses the Lone persona and moves into the territory of sheer beautiful lyricism. A delicately delivered vocal is threaded over gentle guitar work, allowing the lyrics' imagery to come to the fore. That collaborator Ian Rankin gets namechecked in the song is appropriate; Leven’s lyrics are as captivating as the prose of any thriller author, and the creation of Sir Vincent Lone served as a media-bucking outlet for his magnificent songwriting. A fine epitaph.