Not our finest review so for but by no means bad... I'd go as far as saying it's fairly even handed even though I'm described as being both insincere and not intelligent enough to spot when I'm ripping the piss.
Findlay Napier & The Bar Room Mountaineers
File Under Fiction
(Watercolour)
Findlay Napier is not a happy bunny. Whereas Paul Simon got slandered, libelled, heard words he never heard in the Bible and still managed to sound like a choirboy, Napier has been ditched, stood up, locked out and sleep deprived and wants his listeners’ guts for garters. Mr Grumpy is only a persona Napier affects on certain songs but its sneering, bitter shoutiness – closer to the punk rock ethic than the Scottish song tradition he studied at the RSAMD – tends to make his more reflective moments sound insincere. This is a shame because Napier and his offstage writing partner, engineer and producer Nick Turner, bring genuine songcraft and wit to their creations; the tracks on this latest collection are sympathetically arranged, punchy and well played with a certain pop-crossover potential. File Under Fiction, with its clever, literary punning, for example, follows in the Difford & Tilbrook tradition but, as with others, Napier’s delivery makes it even funnier, one suspects, than intended.
Rob Adams- The Sunday Herald
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