Posted by Gerry Cinnamon.
You’ve heard the name, it was plastered on pretty much every single poster for a festival that was going to be on this summer. His quick rise made more impressive by the fact that he often refuses to engage with the mainstream media, rarely doing interviews and doing a lot of the legwork himself.
His previous efforts managing to establish him as a singer-songwriter loosely pegged in the working-class hero vein. But on ‘The Bonny’ his songwriting fails to connect. The sell-out arenas that Gerry has been playing seem to have affected the production at times on this album. The echoed vocal effects on ‘Head In The Clouds’ seem to have been tailor made to reach the furthest ends of open spaces, so they can anthemically be shouted back.
Gerry Cinnamon references multiple times here that he could write a song about someone. In fact, there are at least three occasions where he could put someone in a song, write a song or sing someone a song. Most of the time though ‘The Bonny’ just makes veiled attempts to tell people to live their lives in the face of inevitable death – as if we didn’t have enough of that right now.
The first half of the album is particularly monotonous, with the one-man band fervently spewing similar hooks that show very little dynamism and only serve a purpose to maintain a foot tapping rhythm.
The only track allowed to have a life of its own appears to be ‘Sun Queen’. Where just the inclusion of a drum track that seems present and a melodic whistle give the song much more character than its peers. Cinnamon later attempts to metaphorically call his guitar a ‘Six String Gun’, as if the songs he’s created could be considered inspiring or impactful. In reality, they fail to project more than surface-level observations of social issues and topics.
4/10
Words: Matthew Pywell
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