Skeletons

The old punk adage was to live fast, die young, and have a good-looking corpse - and while Gavin King gave the first one his best shot, he got sidetracked and skipped the next step. Now, almost 50 years after burning brightly on Bristol's burgeoning punk scene of the late seventies, he finds himself having a late surge of creativity. With Private Dicks, the band that first threw Gavin into the spotlight, having just released a live album, and while he waits for his bandmates to finally finish off what will be the Bristol legends' second album, he has turned his attention to his first, fully-fledged, solo effort. With help from Dicks' guitarist and life-long friend Paul Guiver and former Tears For Fears and Robbie Williams sideman Neil Taylor, Skeletons is eight tracks (ten if you get the download) of dark, catchy, post-punk angst, the work of a man who has taken another look at his life and the state of the world and had a few thoughts…. "Obviously everything that's released now is viewed through the prism of the pandemic," Gavin reflects from his apartment in Bristol. "And in many ways, this is no different. Like everyone else I have been indoors for ages, but once I completed Netflix and finished arguing with the cat, I began to look at the state of the world today. "And once I started doing that, I stared looking back at my own life. Then before you know it a bunch of songs are sitting on my hard drive." Once the songs had started to take shape, Gavin drafted in old friends Guiver and Taylor to add the flourishes and finishing touches, with Taylor taking on production duties. The result is something even the usually self-deprecating King is happy with. "Neil's production is just superb," admits Gavin. "He's added a depth to these songs and taken them in directions I really was not expecting - but it really works. "I'd almost go as far as to say I'm proud of this record." For a man known for playing down many of his achievements over the years, this is quite the statement. Blending seething vocals with sweeping, majestic arrangements, Skeletons is a dark, mature record littered with the infectious choruses that made Private Dicks the band they were back in the day. It is fair to say making Skeletons was not something Gavin saw himself doing, even a couple of years ago, but life has a funny way of putting you where you're meant to be