From the clichéd album cover, through every song title, there’s little subtlety regarding the theme of Vinny Peculiar’s 13th album. He’s been making music for 20+ years, but I assume he wasn’t even born in the flowery ’60s world he fixates on during ”How I Learned To Love The Freaks’. So it makes sense that the album is heavy on pastiche and inference, dropping slogans and soundbites and mostly avoiding any deep excavation.
And this works well for the most part to create a mood, rather than painting an distinct image, of the era concerned. The opening ‘Death Of The Counterculture’ and closing ‘Flower Power’ are the most overt in this regard, flooding the senses with images of Haigh-Ashbury, Woodstock and every worn cliché under the sun, with requisite “om”’s to start and the kaleidoscopic, intrusive chorus of “FLOWER POWER” to end. Interestingly, the sound of the album very rarely reaches for the musical palette of the ’60s, except on the Dylan-aping ‘Going To San Francisco’, and even then the touchstones feel more in line with British blues-rock of the time, rather than the paisley-printed psychedelia across the Atlantic.
Despite the lyrical themes being cohesive, the tone shifts from song to song. Headshop manages to make the titular space incredibly dorky, with talk of “plastic candles and multi-coloured sandals” and a distinct aversion to drugs. But the title track tells of an episode in Peculiar’s youth when he helped beat up some “freaks” for no reason, before realising they were alright once he grew up a bit. ‘All Property Is Theft’ is another rare moment of personalisation as he speaks of a “peace camp outside of Monmouth” and hollow feelings beneath Proudhon’s famous aphorism. It makes the album both wide-eyed and cynical, and surprisingly multi-faceted.
The best sound Peculiar achieves is the Lloyd Cole, Aztec Camera-esque groove he finds on songs like ‘Peace And Love’, but even on songs that border on trite there’s usually a cracking solo just around the bend (‘Ashram Curtains’). This shouldn’t be a surprise for someone who’s worked with the latter band, as well as The Fall and projects by Oasis and Smiths members, and is clearly at his best working with those styles. Avoiding the deep interrogation of the era is probably wise given Peculiar’s geographical and temporal removal from it, but from an outsider’s perspective – one who clearly has sincere affection for the period despite misgivings – ‘…Freaks’ is a lovely artefact that’s all the better for not being timeless.