Acting: Brian Averill - Nerophon 1984

Not ostensibly 'shit' on the face of it I grant you; I was attracted to 'Acting' on first blush for all the right reasons - I'd never heard of Brian Averill and, in the dim light of the charity shop, that cover was giving off a vague Scott Walker-ish vibe that suckered me enough to give it a punt. 

So what of it? Well, in the cold light of the street outside, I wasn't long realising that I'd been wearing the record buyer's equivalent of beer goggles to mistake that cover as something anything remotely Scott Walker-ish; with the scales removed it put me in mind of an album by an over earnest, semi acoustic, 'confessional' singer/songwriter with possible religious overtones. And religious overtones aside, I pretty much hit the bull's-eye with that one.   

The fact I've never heard of artist X is never a reliable barometer to gauge anybody's fame by, but a later search online has led me to believe that nobody has heard of him. In my experience, even the most obscure, niche and downright awful acts usually have a small but hardcore following willing to set up a fanclub or website, but apart from a brief catalogue reference on a German website, I can find no other independent verification that the record I have in my hands is anything other than a bad dream; no-one is covering Brian's back for posterity, he is literally dead to the internet. To rub salt into an already raw wound, the copy of his album I bought is minter than a Polo, meaning that any previous owner probably didn't get round to playing it either. So I guess that job falls to me. 

Though 'Acting' was released in 1984, on a blind taste test I'd have placed it roughly a decade earlier, sounding (as it does) like West Coast soft rockers Bread as fronted by a stressed out John Denver. And that's really the binary conclusion that neatly sums up the whole project - the playing is suitably competent and suitably laid back, but Averill's voice meanders all over his songs like a creek in flood, shifting pitch and tone at random as it solemnly intones lyrics that are opaque to the point of impenetrable. Some examples? Well how about "A moment passed in time, I saw eternity. Your glance was ordinary, like a window pane" or "Some may call it civilisation, concrete walls and steel rimmed windows. Dogs that you can carry in one hand. One hand" and my personal favourite "Hey Mr Sandman, hey Mr Hope, send me away man, help me to cope. Give me an hour to breathe, the birds have their cockles and I in my sleep. Send me one or two, three or four, more"

God they're awful. Awful. But as 'Acting' was recorded in Belgium, and even though Averill sings with no discernible foreign accent, I was willing  to give him a pass and see this as the work of a European artist working in an unfamiliar language (or even that he'd unwittingly been handed a bad translation from the original Flemish (or whatever)). Alas, my goodwill can only extend so far, and even with a blind eye turned to the lyrical failings, there's no escaping the painful observation that Averill's songs hang around those words like brittle, Jerry built constructs with no sense of craft or structure, no right angles or foundations and no real evidence that he has much of a clue about what he's doing or what makes a good song in the first place.

Even with those strikes against it I was going to cut 'Acting' a generous amount of slack and see it as the work of a keen amateur working with unfamiliar tools and ultimately too big a fish in too small a barrel for the critic in me to find any pleasure in taking pot shots at. But then fate intervened and I discovered 'Acting' had its own inbuilt Rosetta stone in the form of a typewritten publicity notice cum resume that's as pristine as the vinyl around it. It has clearly lain undisturbed inside the sleeve since 1983 like treasure in an unrobbed Pharaoh's tomb. And whereas I previously struggled to find any information on Averill whatsoever, I suddenly found myself with plenty of it. More than I ever needed in fact. 

And what I learned lead me to wind that slack in pronto until it was cheesewire tight. You can read the notice for yourself and make up your own mind in light of what I've written above, but for my part this fresh insight casts Averill and his album as less the output of a keen amateur to the pretentious vanity work of a deluded hack whose self belief is not matched by personal talent. David Brent eighteen years before Ricki Gervais dreamed him up in fact. My patience is at an end and I'm afraid it's back to the shop with you Mr Averill. And you can take your cockles with you.