http://adamthomaswalton.co.uk/music/theboy.mp3
Before the spiel, download & listen to the song above.
It's The Boy in session on my BBC Radio Wales show.
Now, the spiel:
I am the boy who cried wolf.
I've implored you, on occasions past, to drag yourselves out of the house to Telfords Warehouse to see such piffling musical non-entities as 60ft Dolls, Coldplay, the Pipettes, Mclusky, the Automatic, Dirty Perfect [the precursors to the stupidly hip Red Light Company], the Hot Puppies, and many more besides.
There aren't many who can claim to have seen Coldplay bewitch 150 people on a warm summer night in Chester, or -- at the polar opposite end of the sonic spectrum -- Mclusky terrify the living daylights out of Chester's post-work, white wine spritzer-set during a soundcheck that shifted the whole building three quarters of an inch to the left.
Nothing is a given in these uncertain times, but perhaps the single most talented songwriter to visit my Friday nights in Telfords is the minimalistically-monikered 'The Boy'.
He's been sending four track recordings of his beautiful and honest songs to my BBC Radio Wales show for a couple of years now.
They're the best recordings I have ever played.
They are works of grace, craft and instinct that marry melodic invention with lyrical insight that may, one day, be acclaimed as genius. There's no point in me calling him a genius. I'm no Zane Lowe, after all.
'The Boy' is utterly original, yet familiar at the same time. The comparisons that I would offer, so that you get an idea of what to expect when you come to see him on the 20th March, would sound like more rhetoric and hyperbole written to fleece you out of a hard-earned £4 [or nothing, if you get there before 9pm]. Suffice to say, then, that if you like the Beatles, Bowie, Elliott Smith, the Smiths, Bob Dylan, All Mod Cons-era Weller, Leadbelly and the White Stripes, you will find much to enjoy here.
Much.
And I'm hoping that that understatement, from this particular gobshite hype-monger, will be enough to persuade you that this is another of those rare occasions when something truly special will pass through our venue.
The Boy himself would wince and blush if he read this.
At heart he is just a modest songwriter with a rare gift and songs to sing.
But what songs!
So, on this one occasion, allow me to be a wolf who cried 'The Boy!' and please do your best to heed my call.
'The Boy' visits Telfords Warehouse, Chester on Friday 20th March.
*FREE* before 9pm.
£4 thereafter
http://twitter.com/adamwalton
©Adam Walton
2010
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