This Boy Don't Care

Can the blues be effete? Sure, it can be bawdy like Ma Rainey or gruff like Howlin’ Wolf or haunted like Robert Johnson or holy like Blind Willie. But can it be played by a whiteboy dandy from the Thames Delta?
That question was decisively answered by The Stones, Cream et al many moons ago, and Mister David Viner, a 24-year-old scholar and Bert Jansch devotee, has much in common with the mid-60s art school cabal who took Charlie Patton 78s as their Eucharist. He also dresses more like a member of The Strokes than one of the thousands of pony-tailed Budweiser bozos who mistake frenetic fingersmithery for feel in the blues bars and festival circuits of the western hemisphere. But notwithstanding a kinship with young pups like The Kills and The Von Bondies, Viner resists mating gnarled old forms with garage rock fuzzboxes. This is country blues as played outside Paddington station, plain and unadorned as Woody or Hank or Dylan’s first album. He vocalises like a man singing into his shirt, the murmuring Mississippi John Hurt approach rather than the declamatory braggadocio of the Chicago set.
The titles are instructive: ‘Sick And Tired Of Being On My Own’, ‘You’d Think It’d Get A Little Easier, ‘I’m Getting Married In The Spring.’ Viner’s one-liners are as dry and deadpan as his delivery. Sure, we’ve heard those plucked progressions a million times, but his supporting cast play it deft and spare: parlour piano, hushed brushes, baritone sax, Jordanaires backing vocals on ‘Goblin In My Bread’. And yes, the predominant air of world-weary whimsy necessitates a tea break halfway through, but while Mister David Viner is no Beefhearted mutant, nor is he a slavish period revivalist. In other words, he may sing like Eeyore but he ain’t no ass.