Rob Marr
Album: Anatomy
Label: RMCD
Tracks: 9
Website: http://www.robmarr.net

Following an unlikely hook-up with Sly & the Family Stone drummer Andy Newmark, singer songwriter Marr married his decidedly English piano tunes to the funky New York grooves of his new collaborator. At times it seems like an uneasy alliance, as evidenced on That Was Then This Is Now with its uncomfortable intro, but the album - like that particular song - settles into its own parameters surprisingly well after a listen or two.

Kings Cross St Pancras On a Sunny Spring Morning is a title that would be hopelessly pretentious in other hands and yet here it believably conjures exactly what it says. Lead single Fencebuilding works up a perky slice of life story cut with an eerie, hymnal middle section that's quite at odds with the eyebrow arching vocal delivery Marr employs in the rest of the song.

Anatomy of a Lover takes a bare bones approach and serves up a gentle, soul-baring song that Kate Nash can only dream of. Fat and Happy is tender, tragi-comic, laced with a wonderfully slurred keyboard figure that's part-Stevie Wonder, part-Randy Newman. Summer in the City presses a lovely thick 70s analogue keyboard into service and employs an equally retro ELO-style harmoniser on the vocals to suggest an historic vision of the future; and That Was Then This Is Now has a kind of early-Bowie performance feel to it.

Other reference points include Squeeze, Madness, Jack Penate, Sly Stone, Mott the Hoople, Frank Sidebottom, even Roxy at their most artful. The songs twist and turn throughout, taking unexpected detours but always to the benefit of the song, thus avoiding the cul de sacs of self-indulgence.

Very much the 21st century pop artist, Rob Marr undertakes tours of people's homes, doesn't have a label as such and cites his ambition to play every county in England and every country in Europe before the UK devolves and the Euro collapses.

Nick Churchill
www.thegranvillechambers.co.uk