Peter Bruntnell – You’d Make A Great Widow – episode #020

If we lived in a just world, Peter Bruntnell would by now be in the middle of his third or fourth global arena tour, his biggest worry working out how to courier his latest armful of Grammy awards back to the UK so his butler could have them installed in the west wing of mansion by the time he got home. Instead, the Kingston upon Thames-based, Devon-raised, New Zealand-born singer-songwriter spent February playing a tour of venues that included the front room of a terraced house. His new album, Nos Da Comrade, features lead single Mr Sunshine, a rollicking deconstruction of a certain US presidential candidate and a golf course that destroyed a Scottish fishing community. The ninth album of an uncommonly excellent recording career, it will be released – alas, all too fittingly – on April Fools’ Day.

The fools, of course, are the vast majority of the world’s listening public, who have stubbornly refused to pay much attention to Bruntnell since the release of his debut LP more than 20 years ago. Ringing endorsements from the likes of REM’s Peter Buck and Son Volt’s Jay Farrar have been matched by rave reviews (Guardian Music contributor Keith Cameron, reviewing Bruntnell’s third LP in NME, memorably wrote that “his songs should be taught in schools”). And the music really is exceptional – a canon of classically constructed, melodically rich, lyrically ingenious and emotionally, intellectually affecting songs that bears comparison with the all-time greats. Yet there appears to be almost nobody listening…“

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