His Clancyness
Vicious

"Rock 'n' Roll is about dreams"

The aforementioned phrase, spoken by Mr. Clancy at the opening of the "Zenith Diamond" video, is the best introduction for the album in question.

Jonathan Clancy, formerly the leader of A Classic Education and Settlefish, is the mastermind behind the His Clancyness project and debuts with FatCat Records with "Vicious". "Vicious" presents itself as an undeniably international record: recorded in financially bankrupt Detroit by Chris Koltay (who has also worked with Liars and Atlas Sound), released by an English label (the aforementioned FatCat), with English lyrics sung by a native English speaker (His Clancyness is of Canadian origin) and with sounds heavily indebted to the USA.

In short, "Vicious" is one of the few records in many years to transcend a certain typically Italian "indie provincialism." The beginning is disorienting: "Safe Around The Edges" is a surf-rock song with a rhythm section bordering on post-punk and inserts heavily indebted to a certain dream pop. It continues with the delicate interplay between electric and acoustic guitars of "Miss Out These Days", reminiscent of the more intimate Deerhunter, and with "Gold Diggers", two minutes of minimal pop.

After the convincing initial triad, there are tracks in the tracklist qualitatively inferior to the first three, but to lift the level comes "Machines" with a guitar progression that leads to a long solo. "Zenith Diamond" combines reverberated voices and blistering rhythms reminiscent of Wire.

The best track of the bunch "Progress" is relegated to the end and concludes with an instrumental coda a diverse and well-thought-out album, which does not suffer from lapses in style even in the less focused tracks (placed judiciously in the middle section), and which confirms the songwriting qualities already evident in his previous works (above all "Call It Blazing" by A Classic Education).