‘This was the hardest record I’ve ever made…’

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Peter Bruntnell

UK Americana singer-songwriter Peter Bruntnell’s latest album, Houdini and the Sucker Punch, is his twelfth – and it’s also one of his best. 

After 2021’s stripped-back, pandemic-era Journey To The Sun, which was surprisingly inspired by Eno and Bowie’s more electronic and experimental moments – it even had vintage synths on it – his new record was made with a full band, and it’s a return to Bruntnell’s Americana roots, but with nods to classic British bands including The Smiths and The Beatles, as well as US acts like The Byrds and Pavement / Stephen Malkmus.

The superb title track, which opens the album, is classic Bruntnell – irresistible and melodic alt-country with a plaintive undercurrent.

It’s followed by recent single, the sublime and jangly The Flying Monk, with guitars firmly on ‘Johnny Marr setting’, while Head-Smashed-In Buffalo Jump is soaked in Revolver-era psych, Mellotron and Fab Four vocal harmonies.

Let There Be A Scar adds a touch of Everly Brothers, but with Neil Young’s ‘90s grungy stadium rock, and even the pop sensibilities of Deacon Blue.

Guitar gunslinger, James Walbourne (The Pretenders, The Rails and His Lordship),  fires off some ace twanging on the playful and galloping Wild West adventure that is Yellow Gold – Bruntnell is on bouzouki duties – while things are taken down a notch with the yearning ballad, Sharks, which has a lovely melancholy feel thanks to Laura Anstee’s mournful cello.

No Place Like Home is upbeat and jangly Americana – the Byrdsy guitars ring out like The Bells of Rhymney – and the pedal steel-laced, moody and haunting R.E.M-esque ballad, Stamps of the World, evokes Country Feedback from Out of Time.

Say It With Garage Flowers spoke to Bruntnell over a couple of beers in a pub near London’s South Bank one evening in late summer to find out about the writing and recording of the new record.

“I didn’t think this album was Americana, but maybe it is,” he tells us, confusingly…

Q&A

When we last spoke, it was to promote your 2021 album, Journey To The Sun – a sparse, stripped-down solo record that was made during the time of the pandemic, when you’d bought a synth, a drum machine and a bouzouki. You told me you’d been listening to Another Green World by Brian Eno and Bowie’s Low, which influenced the sound of the record.

When I asked you what kind of album you might make after Journey To The Sun, you said it could be another ‘electro record’, but you haven’t done that – Houdini and the Sucker Punch is a full-band Americana album. You’ve gone back to your roots…

Peter Bruntnell: I didn’t think it was Americana, but maybe it is – one song is a rip-off of The Byrds!

That’s No Place Like Home, which has a jangly Americana feel…

Peter Bruntnell: Yeah.

You’ve got pedal steel on the album too, which gives it that Americana sound… Was this record a deliberate reaction to the last one, or was it more organic than that?

Peter Bruntnell: I didn’t really think about it – it was just how the songs came out. I don’t know whether it was a conscious decision to write songs that would translate better with a band or whether it was just how it came out. I’m not sure.

Do you write songs on acoustic or electric guitar?

Peter Bruntnell: I write on both.

Are you a prolific songwriter?

Peter Bruntnell: No, I’m not. I had about 13 songs [for this album] but three fell by the wayside and I ended up doing Stamps of the World because I liked the song, and it hadn’t been on an official release.

It was on Ringo Woz Ere, which isn’t see as one of your official albums…

Peter Bruntnell: I didn’t think it was a good enough album to call it an album… I didn’t think a record company would be interested in it.

Stamps of the World is a great song – it stands out on Houdini and the Sucker Punch because it’s the darkest and moodiest song on the record…

Peter Bruntnell: Yeah – I guess so…

It reminds me of Country Feedback by R.E.M…

Peter Bruntnell: I don’t know that one.

It’s from Out of Time and it’s my favourite R.E.M song…

Peter Bruntnell: Oh, really.

You’ve got some of your long-term collaborators on the album: Mick Clews (drums), Dave Little (electric guitar) and Peter Noone (bass), plus some special guests: pedal steel player, Eric Heywood; Son Volt/ Uncle Tupelo’s Jay Farrar on piano; cellist Laura Anstee, and Mark Spencer (Son Volt) on Hammond organ and piano. You toured with the States with Son Volt recently, didn’t you?

Peter Bruntnell: Last year. While I was out on tour with them, I was talking to Mark, and I asked him if he’d play on the new record. He was like, ‘Yeah – of course.’  So, then I thought, ‘Maybe I’ll ask Jay if he would play piano…’ He said, ‘Yeah –I ’ll give it a go…’ So, that was cool.

Son Volt have always been a big influence on you, haven’t they?

Peter Bruntnell: Yeah – very much.

‘I didn’t think this album was Americana, but maybe it is – one song is a rip-off of The Byrds!’

What about the other guests?

Peter Bruntnell: Eric Heywood is one of my favourite pedal steel players – I messaged him to see if he had a studio at home and he said he would love to do it and that he could do it at home. That was a game-changer – Eric’s great.

Peter Linnane also plays Hammond organ and synth on the record…

Peter Bruntnell: He’s the guy that masters my records. He’s in Massachusetts. With technology being what it is, you can get your favourite players on the album and you can stay at home.

We recorded the drums and the bass in Wargrave, Berkshire, with a mate of mine called Jim Lowe, who has engineered quite a few of my records – he works for the Stereophonics mostly and he has a studio in his garden. His wife is Laura [Anstee], who plays cello on the album.

The cello sounds great – very mournful and melancholy….

Peter Bruntnell: It’s amazing.

‘With technology being what it is, you can get your favourite players on the album and you can stay at home’

James Walbourne, who has played with Son Volt, and is in The Pretenders, His Lordship and The Rails, is also on the album – he plays guitar on Yellow Gold…

Peter Bruntnell: Yeah – he did that at his place.

That song is a Wild West adventure, with twangy guitar…

Peter Bruntnell: It’s perfect for James. I wrote it on a bouzouki. After touring with Son Volt last year, me and my girlfriend drove from Colorado to Montana – we drove through Colorado and Wyoming, and, if you haven’t seen that part of America, it’s mind-blowing. There’s nothing – no settlements or farms – it’s mental. You can feel the buffalo and the Indians there. By the time we got to Montana, I was in a bookshop buying a book about trappers and the gold rush.

When I came back, I listened to a load of podcasts about it and one of them was about a guy who blows a hole in the side of a mountain – it falls on him and he’s trapped under the rocks. He smells some smoke coming from a campfire, so he starts shouting and a cowboy hears him and saves him, but by the time he gets him to the hospital, which is fucking a week’s ride away, he’s dead.

But, before he dies, he tells him there’s a load of gold in the hole, and the cowboy spends the rest of his life trying to find where he rescued the bloke, but he never finds it. It’s mental, but that’s not in the song… The song was inspired by the podcast, but I made the guy a Welsh bloke from the valleys, because I’m Welsh. I was born in New Zealand, but I’m Welsh.

Let’s talk about some of the other songs on the album. The title track opens the record and it has an Americana feel, with Hammond organ and pedal steel. One of the traits of your music is that you combine a great melody with a melancholy undercurrent…

Peter Bruntnell: Maybe.

You can write a great pop tune that has a sadness to it – that’s one of the reasons I like your music. What can you tell me about the title track, which has lyrics by your long-term songwriting partner, Bill Ritchie?

Peter Bruntnell: I thought of the title and then said to Bill: ‘We’ve got to write a song called Houdini and the Sucker Punch…’

It was a co-write lyrically, but when I wrote it, it had a different tune – it was around the time of King of Madrid [2019 album], but I didn’t like the tune enough. Then I found a tune that I’d recorded on my Dictaphone – I went through it looking for anything that might be useful or usable, and that melody was on there, so I adapted the lyrics.

 

The Flying Monk is my favourite song on the album – the guitars have the feel of The Smiths / Johnny Marr, and there’s a nod to Some Girls Are Bigger Than Others in the lyrics, when you sing: ‘Saint Joseph told the rebel as he emptied a yard of ale…’

Peter Bruntnell: Yeah – of course. The Smiths are one of my favourite bands.

So, you deliberately wanted The Flying Monk to sound like them?

Peter Bruntnell: I was trying to make it sound like Superman by R.E.M, with those harmonies – so, it was a bit of that and a bit of The Smiths, but the riff is more Syd Barrett – the first two notes are like Lucifer Sam [Pink Floyd]. The riff came really late – we’d already recorded the rhythm tracks… I was in the studio, and I needed a riff.

Lyrically, the song was inspired by an 11th century Benedictine monk called Eilmer of Malmesbury, who tried to fly using wings… There’s also a brewery named The Flying Monk…

Peter Bruntnell: It’s a good little story – he broke both his arms and both his legs. I didn’t know the story until the Christmas before last… I was in Gloucestershire, and I wrote the song in-between Christmas and the New Year.

Sharks is another of my favourite songs on the album – it’s a love song, but, lyrically, when you mention surfing in it, as part of a metaphor, was that inspired by an experience with your first record company when you were in a band in the early days? 

Peter Bruntnell: Part of it was. The band was the Peter Bruntnell Combination – we had an album called Cannibal. My record company learnt that I was trying to surf, and they went, ‘Great – he’s a surfer, so let’s send him down to Cornwall.’

That was their angle – they paid for me and my band to go to Cornwall every weekend. I was an acoustic guitar player only at that time – I was slowly learning how to play electric… My guitar player,  who was in his wetsuit, said [puts on a camp, theatrical voice]: ‘This grey rubber suit is driving me mad…’

He actually said that to me, so, it’s always been in my head – it’s quite comical. Sharks is a kind of love song….

It’s a beautiful song…

Peter Bruntnell: Ahh – thanks, mate.

So, from surfing to dancing… Let’s talk about the video for the first single, Out of the Pines, which made me smile…

Peter Bruntnell: It’s pretty amateurish, but it’s sincere. We filmed it on the Isle of Bute – it’s very remote. I went there to go fishing and found a fallen-down chapel, so we filmed a video there – I knew I was going to be dancing, but I didn’t know it was going to be a one-take thing… It was mildly embarrassing, but I don’t care anymore…

I love the opening lines of that song: ‘I’ve never been much good at getting up in the morning – singing after dark has been my tomb…’

Peter Bruntnell: That’s autobiographical… I wanted to write a song that was a bit like Ron Sexsmith – it’s me trying to be him.

In the press material for the album, you describe Let There Be A Scar as having “a very vibey feel…” It has Everly Brothers-style harmonies and is a bit like Neil Young’s ‘90s grungy stadium rock…

Peter Bruntnell: It’s almost Nirvana for me, and the melody is almost Let It Be Me by the Everly Brothers. I also really love Acetone, so the quiet bits are very Acetone, guitar-wise.

Head-Smashed-In Buffalo Jump is very Revolver-era Beatles, with psychedelic backwards guitar…

Peter Bruntnell: That was the initial idea – I wanted to write a song like Rain. There’s a place in Canada called Head-Smashed-In Buffalo Jump – Bill [Ritchie] has always gone about it… When I was driving through Wyoming, with the Rocky Mountains on my left, as I was going north… That was another song that was inspired by the plains and Wyoming, but the idea is that there’s a bloke on the Tube feeling like he’s just jumped off the cliff at Buffalo and landed on his head. It’s also inspired by a story that’s in the podcast I mentioned earlier: Dr. History’s Tales of the Old West – there’s a story about an Indian kid who used to run buffalo off a cliff. The kid got a bit too keen and ended up at the bottom… I used it as a metaphor for someone going into London on the Tube…

You’ve certainly nailed that Revolver feel… Is that a Mellotron sound on it?

Peter Bruntnell: Yeah – that’s Pete Linnane. He sent me four of five keyboard parts to choose from.

Revolver is my favourite album of all time…

Peter Bruntnell: I like that one – I was listening to it yesterday, driving back from Devon. Taxman is insane…

‘I like the fact that this album is quite up and the songs are fast’

The last song on the new album is Jimmy Mac, which is one of the more subdued moments  – the cello gives it an autumnal feel, and the outro reminds me of Wichita Lineman…

Peter Bruntnell: Yeah – we were going for that kind of thing. That was Dave [Little] – he only plays on two songs on the record, because he didn’t have a set-up at his place in Devon, and I made the record in London. So, it was geography… he was four hours away and I couldn’t send him stuff… I was trying to get it done and also do a full-time job…

So, how was it making this album?

Peter Bruntnell: It was the hardest record I’ve ever made – I was mixing it, doing overdubs, and going to fucking work, and I produced it…

Are you pleased with it?

Peter Bruntnell: I am.

‘I was fed up with protesting. I wanted this album to be more pastoral and to try another angle’

I think it’s one of your best…

Peter Bruntnell: That’s cool. I like the fact that it’s quite up and the songs are fast.

It’s 10 tracks – five on each side on the vinyl. Bang! Too many albums are too long nowadays…

Peter Bruntnell: I agree.  

Some of your previous songs have dealt with political issues – Mr. Sunshine was about Trump. This time around, you haven’t tackled politics…

Peter Bruntnell: I was just fed up with protesting. I wanted this album to be more pastoral and to try another angle…

So, you wrote more story songs with characters in them?

Peter Bruntnell: Yeah – I’m not banging on about the Tories anymore… and now they’re out. anyway…

Houdini and the Sucker Punch is out now on Domestico Records.

For more info, visit: https://peterbruntnell.co.uk/

 

UK Tour Dates

2024

Oct 4:LIVERPOOL Outpost
Oct 5:ISLE OF BUTE Craigmore Bowling Club
Oct 6:GLASGOW The Glad Cafe
Oct 20:TWICKENHAM Eel Pie Records (in-store & signing)

Dec 5: LONDON The Green Note (duo show with Robbie McIntosh)
Dec 14: SUTTON The Sound Lounge
Dec  15: ST LEONARDS The Regency Rooms

2025

Mar 6: NOTTINGHAM Angel Microbrewery
Mar 7: PRESTON The New Continental
Mar 8: GATESHEAD The Central

‘Silver Meadows is the most surprising record I’ve ever written’

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Photo by Paul Tsanos

Vinny Peculiar is one of our favourite singer-songwriters here at Say It With Garage Flowers and we always love having a chat with him. It’s been a while since we caught up, so we thought we’d better rectify that situation…

Last year, he released his thirteenth studio album, the well-received ‘hippy-rock’ record, How I Learned To Love The Freaks, which was inspired by the death of the counterculture in modern society, the peace and love era of the ’60s, and the sociopolitical awakenings that occurred in the latter part of that decade. 

This autumn, Peculiar, who grew up in Worcestershire, is playing a few shows in the UK, including a gig at Thornton Hough Village Club, in Birkenhead, where he’ll be revisiting songs from his 2016 album, Silver Meadows (Fables From The Institution) and playing the record in its entirety.

Writing about that record when it was released, Say It With Garage Flowers called it, ‘a tragi-comic masterpiece that tackles the issues of mental health and care in the community.’

Silver Meadows (Fables From The Institution) is a concept album that’s set in a fictitious long-stay institution and it was inspired by Peculiar working as a nurse and visiting his schizophrenic brother in hospitals during the ’80s and early ’90s.

We asked him why he’s chosen to revisit an album that came out eight years ago, discussed why mental health issues have become easier to talk about, got his views on the death of counterculture and how the music industry has changed, and found out what he’s got planned for his next record.

Q&A

So, on September 21, you’re appearing at the Thornton Hough Village Club, in Birkenhead, and for that show, you’ll be playing your 2016 album, Silver Meadows (Fables From The Institution) in its entirety. Can you tell me what prompted you to return to that record?

Vinny Peculiar: Yes. I’ve gone back to Silver Meadows… It’s probably the album I get the most communications about – I think that’s partly to do with some of the mental health themes that run through it. It was also the most surprising record I ever wrote, because it was the last thing I expected to do when I left the NHS – to dwell upon some of my experiences. But sometimes that defines you, so I ended up making that record…

When I talked to you about the album eight years ago, you told me that there was a two or three-week spell at the start of 2014 when you wrote 20 songs…

VP: Yeah – it was a very quick turnaround…

You’d touched on mental health issues in some of your older songs, like Big Grey Hospital, but Silver Meadows was a concept album about a long-stay mental facility…

VP: Yeah… and the people who work, live and play there… and, ultimately, the people who get away from there. In the ‘80s, the Community Care Act enabled authorities to plan for care outside of long-stay institutions, so a lot of them were closed down. That was a good thing, but the challenge was to meet the needs of people once they were out in the real world.

‘Silver Meadows is the album I get the most communications about – I think that’s partly to do with some of the mental health themes that run through it’

You mentioned that the themes of the album have resonated with people. Since you made Silver Meadows, mental health seems to be higher up the agenda – talking about it is less taboo than it was…

VP: Yeah – and I think that’s a good thing. People can share their worries and their stress, and talk more, without feeling too embarrassed about it. People do turn around and say, ‘I think I’m having a bad day, and this is what’s going on – can I talk to you about it?’ They are more likely to communicate.

I think a lot of that is down to Covid, which affected a lot of people mentally, as well as physically…

VP: Absolutely. With Silver Meadows, I’ve done a few guest spots at the National Psychiatrists’ Convention – they approached me. I played some songs and talked about my experiences working in the NHS a long time ago and the impact of change.

Half of the people in the place I was working didn’t want it closed down, but the other half did – it was about having a long-term vision for the people who’d been stuck in those places for a long time – often for no good reason. They were given labels they didn’t deserve. There were older women who were only there because they’d got pregnant as kids, which was bizarre – their reason for admission was social embarrassment.

I think Silver Meadows is one of your most eclectic albums – there’s a stripped-down piano song, New Wave, dark and psychedelic stuff, guitar pop, jangly country, folk…  I don’t mean this in bad taste, because of the subject matter, but it’s quite a schizophrenic record…

VP: I know what you’re saying – it’s all over the place… It’s basically a character-driven record – each of the tracks reflect certain characters at a certain time, like the person in Community Care who is about to be shown a new house in the community and is incredibly anxious.

That was a massive issue – all these patients had been at the facility for donkey’s years and all of a sudden someone is out in the real world – even though they’d been in a home, with some pretty awful stuff going on, people became used to it and they became institutionalised.

Community Care is about breaking that cycle of institutionalisation and enabling people to function in the real world – the impact that had. A lot of the people in those places had communication difficulties – they were incredibly with it but didn’t have a way of expressing it. They were non-verbal but you kind of knew what was going on.

There’s a song on the album called Waiting Games, which is about a lad who’s got locked-in syndrome. It’s not totally a true story, but it’s about him falling for a young psychologist who’s trying to help him, and is vaguely aware that there’s more to him than meets the eye. He falls in love with her, but he can never express it until he finds a way of communicating with her.

Mental health isn’t an easy subject to write about – you wouldn’t want to come across as patronising or distasteful – but you tackle it respectfully, and there’s humour on the record, as well as some serious songs and issues…

VP: Yeah. The drug dealer song [Gerald The Porter] is fun.

Wednesday Club is a humorous song too…

VP: It is, but the crazy thing about those places is that they did have a nightclub every Wednesday that started at six o’clock and lasted until half past eight, because that’s when the staff went home. Everything gets distorted in an institution – it’s all about the staff and not about the people who live there. Who’d want to go to a disco at six o’clock?

So, when you perform the album live this month, are you and your band going to play the songs from it chronologically?

VP: We are, and I’m going to narrate each of the songs in a more structured way, with some media as well.

Talking of gigs, I enjoyed your show at the Water Rats in London earlier this year, in support of your most recent album, How I Learned To Love The Freaks – it was great to hear some of those songs played live…

VP: I’ve had good feedback on that album – it’s funny, you put an album out, you get a surge of interest, you do your social media, and then you sell a few copies, and then it tails off, and then you think again… That’s my process – I’m not expecting it to go stratospheric, but the reaction was really good. I think it’s one of my better albums – the overall sound of it. I wanted it to be a proper hippy-rock record.

Where did the concept of making a counterculture album from?

VP: Counterculture is massive in all our lives – certainly my generation and yours. It’s an omnipresent force, and music was such a big part of it, particularly when we were young. I think a lot of the power in that cultural force has been dissipated and bought off by huge corporations.

If you look at Taylor Swift, that’s what people view music as now – she’s taking over the world. Music seems to have been taken over by corporations who will spend a billion pounds worldwide on advertising to get two billion back – they buy every streaming platform, radio station and advert.

Money, money, money will buy it, so people have it thrust upon them, and, before you know it, it just monopolises everybody’s lives. The idea of music being an alternative… you’ve got to look a lot harder to find alternatives to the mainstream now, because the mainstream is just so forceful.

The song Death of the Counterculture is about music as a cool force for good, and also as a voice of political reasoning and objectivity, and alternative political ideas – from green to typically left-wing. It just isn’t happening anymore – there’s no Red Wedge 24. Even politics has been bought off.

‘If you look at Taylor Swift, that’s what people view music as now – she’s taking over the world. Music seems to have been taken over by corporations who will spend a billion pounds worldwide on advertising to get two billion back’

A lot of artists who have a large platform to influence people shy away from talking about politics, as they’re afraid it will damage their career…

VP: Yeah. Everyone’s more sensitive and feels much more fragile about the dos and don’ts of their media profile, and there’s so much investment in that. You can buy a profile now.

So, what’s next? Are you working on a new album?

VP: I’ve been putting together a new album of tracks that didn’t quite make the old albums – it will probably come out next year. I’m trying to think of a new album, but I’ve got so many songs that didn’t get onto previous ones. I’m trying to work out which ones are any good (laughs).

Vinny Peculiar is playing live this autumn:

  • Sept 20: Tapestry Arts, Bradford,
  • Sept 21: Thornton Hough Village Club, Birkenhead
  • October 18: Davenham Theatre, Davenham
  • November 10: Kitchen Garden Cafe, Birmingham
  • There’s also a 2025 date planned at The Music Room, Liverpool, on May 31.

For more information and tickets, visit: https://vinnypeculiar.com.