After reading the Will Not Fade blog’s far more timely review of this album I was quite taken by something the author noted in the review’s final paragraph about “imposter syndrome”. And although I’m not sure those words are the precise words I’d have used, I got the point, and I could relate to the dilemma.
It’s that sense you get when you feel ill-equipped to critique the work of someone you admire. That feeling of inadequacy, and the notion that whatever I wrote, no matter how honest, how insightful, or even how witty I thought I was being, Vorn Colgan - musician, wordsmith, funny-man - could have articulated it so much better himself.
It’s all there in his songs, and if you’ve ever had a chance to read Colgan’s own (far too irregular) written word musings on his Vornography website … well, it’s enough to make you want to permanently retire your own keyboard out of sheer frustration. Vorn Colgan knows how to create a little bit of magic out of words. And he seems to be able to do so without much effort at all.
Writing words is one thing. Turning them into a bunch of decent tunes is quite something else. What are we up to now? Album number eight? Album number nine? And still so little mainstream traction. Colgan probably couldn’t care less. His songs, after all, “are his children”. There to be shaped, nurtured, and loved, and like any parent, his starting point is just as likely to be “who bloody well cares what anyone else thinks? … I love these snotty-nosed little bastards”.
Words are mostly what it is all about though. Words and music. There’s some pretty great words on The Late Album, all underpinned by the unique musical talents of Thomas Liggett (violin) and Nick Brown (drums, percussion) who also support Colgan - who does a lot of everything else - on vocals at various points. As Vorn, the band, this is a tight, well-honed trio, operating at something close to a peak. Although, to be fair, every new Vorn, the band, release across the past two decades has felt like a peak.
Death is, naturally enough, a prominent theme – the album opens with a track called ‘Fanfare For An Album That Beat Terminal Cancer’ and closes with ‘A Dying Man’s Curse Be Upon You’ … the opener being exactly what it says on the tin, a brief “fanfare”, while the closer veers into faux-country-prog-hybrid territory. Several listens in, I still can’t really make out the exact lyrics, but suspect its title rather gives the game away.
Between those two bookends we get various musical forms and a mix of genre, with the most common thread being that wicked sense of humour in the lyrics. I’d be lying profusely if I said that ‘Aging Hipster Blues’ and ‘Drug Friends’ didn’t, for my own sins, touch something of a raw nerve. I laughed and I cried a little, simultaneously.
Then there’s ‘Somebody Wrote A Prog Song About The Internet And It Is (Flame emoji)’ … where to even start with that little 6-minute-plus beastie? Sort of epic, a little bit Beatle-esque, with chunks of pretend Black Sabbath, just for laughs. There’s definitely something quite psychedelic about it, whatever the hell it’s supposed to be.
Suffice to say, without going through all of the individual highlights or trying to dissect each track, the two advance singles - odd timings and breakdowns notwithstanding - ‘No Arms, No Chocolate’ and the covertly catchy ‘A Safe Pair of Hands’ are perhaps the most pop-friendly tracks on the album.
All up, 13 tracks, a lot of hooks, a solid baroque feel - another Vorn staple - thanks largely to the presence of Liggett’s violin and other unusual instrumentation (um, a “banjolin”?), and more than the odd morsel of humour, it’s another worthy addition to Vorn’s ever-expanding musical legacy.
Just a note on that album cover: once you’ve seen it as The Latex Bum, it becomes impossible to unsee it. With thanks to the person who pointed that out … (I think).
You can pick up a copy of Vorn’s The Late Album here (Bandcamp)
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