I have mentioned my fondness for Sunderland’s  Golden Virgins before and it’s fair to say their break-up a few years ago was much lamented in these parts. Fortunately the Virgins’ main man Lucas Renney has continued to make music since the split with new songs regularly appearing on his Myspace and he is now almost ready to release his debut solo LP  ‘Strange Glory’.

To some extent the Virgins fitted into the ‘Manic’ aspects of this blog’s manifesto. But whilst their  uptempo stuff,  such as ‘Renaissance Kid’ and ‘I Am A Camera’, was great what really distinguished their sole LP (‘Songs of Praise’) for me was the slower stuff. Renney’s songs of love gone wrong were brilliantly realised and established him as a songwriter of considerable range and depth.

And it’s the more downbeat direction in which he seems to have headed as a solo artist. The other week he made the incredibly generous offer of sending out a 4 track sampler EP  from the forthcoming album for free to those who asked. My copy was quickly requested and duly delivered as promised last week and it’s been on regular rotation ever since.

Playing the CD for the first time, my first impression is that the low bit rate versions on the Myspace fail to do the scope of the songs justice. All four songs on the EP are of an extremely high standard and whilst musically it could hardly be less manic the emphasis on melody means that there is  something uplifting in the tunes.

The songs aren’t just cathartic musically but also (one imagines)  lyrically. The title of ‘She Gives Me The Chills’ could suggest a traditional love song but in fact it’s a tale of unrequited love with the singer feigning indifference to mask his true feelings.

Lead track ‘Oh My Pretty One’ is built on a simple motif and again things don’t seem to be going well.  ‘Oh my pretty one, who’s it going to be? I have gathered all these flowers for thee’  suggests that the flowers haven’t been enough to impress. The use of slightly archaic language is also slightly unsettling.

Quite often I find myself championing artists that I regard as seriously under appreciated. Undoubtedly the Virgins fell into this category but hopefully the upcoming LP will elevate Lucas from that status. Certainly on the evidence of the EP, the full album is going to be an essential purchase.

‘Strange Glory’ is likely to be available for download at some point in the summer with the physical release to follow, possibly early next year.

Go to Lucas’s Myspace to hear two tracks from the EP and the equally excellent ‘Think of Me Kindly’.