Rob Dickinson
Fresh Wine for the Horses

When a debut solo album is, in chronological order, the most recent in an entire career, it often means the band has broken up, doesn't it?

Yet the Catherine Wheel have never declared they've split, even though it's been six years since they've released anything. The various former members, as always happens, take part in side projects, replace other musicians in other bands, go on to do session work... The vocalist, instead, has no choice but to put his voice and face out there again and again. Some start another band, others make records and even put their name on them.

Rob Dickinson's debut comes with an album of classical and mature foundation, with a sound indebted to the masters of pop rock, British as well as American, but at first glance, seems to wink at a certain well-crafted Brit-powerpop. Music that, nonetheless, isn't at all the domain of adolescents, if it weren't for the existence of a band known to them as Coldplay. An album that's not difficult but also not complacent and catchy enough to launch Rob, as it was in the days of "Adam And Eve," around half the radios of Europe.

Traces of the most effective and successful Britpop from the best of Verve to early Coldplay and Stereophonics, for the initial ballads "My Name Is Love" and "Oceans," while the following "The Night" is a guitar and voice track with Springsteenian roots that, when the accompaniment rises a bit, seems to veer towards an epic-Celtic folk: can you imagine old Bruce in a kilt?

If his low, warm, and dreamy voice shines in the wonderful autumnal ballad "Intelligent People," which alone would be worth an entire discography of an Italian melodic, it's also true that up to that point, Rob has made an album that in the first six positions of the tracklist sees six ballads, and it's undeniable that you arrive at the splendid "Intelligent People" at least a little bit weary.

From there on, without going overboard, good Rob raises the tempo a bit, starting from the following "Handsome," a kaleidoscopic gem of psychedelia and guitars like those of the good old days. In "The Storm" the grunge echoes in a violent chorus, thankfully without mimicking it, neither deliberately nor unconsciously.

The final part of the album is emblematic: "Don't Change" is psychedelia from the masters of Rob and many others, that is, Pink Floyd from "The Dark Side Of The Moon," which this track resembles quite a bit at the beginning. But "Don't Change" is preceded by "Bad Beauty," and if earlier Rob's masters have been honored, here it's only fair to mention his "pupils" (at the time, they were openers for the C.W. concerts) Radiohead of "Exit Music."

The concluding "Towering And Flowering" is, instead, a homage to his own past, that is, to the Catherine Wheel, to shoegaze, a style of which they were pioneers at the start of their career and with which they recorded two magnificent (even if not too acclaimed) works. "Towering And Flowering" even boasts the merit, complex as it is and as shoegaze-indie ought to be, of having one of the most effective choruses of the entire album.

High ratings, even if the work isn't very original, even if the styles aren't new, even if Dickinson walks paths not unexplored, even if it will be easy for someone to classify this album as "Britpop" despite the variety within, as if everything that doesn't sound in step with today’s tastes is old stuff and shelved for years. Instead, this is the young wine of an ancient land.