www.2020mag.com > Ballad Dear

Ballad Dear

04-2010

In a perfect popular music world Anthony Reynolds would be this generation’s Scott Walker or David Bowie or Bryan Ferry. But then again, in a perfect world Reynolds might have nothing to sing about. Like vintage port, Reynold’s first group effort Jack delivered a precious sip of music in the mid-’90s fermented in varied degrees of divine angst and pain. Since then he’s been dabbling in everything from poetry to biography (his latest book “Impossible Dream” fills in the blanks for any questions raised as to the brilliance of The Walker Brothers) and extensive interview documentation of England’s greatest Outsider Colin Wilson. And currently his music might best be sampled on British Ballads, Reynolds’s most recent solo CD. Songs such as “I Know You Know” and “Song of Leaving” should be such popular playlist fodder by now. These melancholic anthems speak and seek to a quest that seems so lost in music today. It is suggested you sing this ballad’s praise. Seek it out and while you are at it visit him at anthonyreynolds.net. His muse and music can seem dense, but his accessibility and sometimes volatile vulnerability is refreshing. And perhaps most important for this particular exposure, his taste in eyewear—here Lafont—is impeccable.

—James J. Spina