Kevin Ayers

Album: The Unfairground
Record Label: Gigantic Music


Comeback records are usually terrible, but it’s a relief that Kevin Ayers was willing to try anyway. After founding the Soft Machine in the late 1960s with Robert Wyatt and maintaining a steady and influential solo career through the 1980s, Kevin Ayers opted out of an active musical career and chose instead to turn out a number of live records, along with a handful of studio recordings, over the last 15 years or so.

Now, called out of retirement obscurity by some of today's indie rockers (Teenage Fanclub and The Ladybug Transistor, to name two admirers), Kevin Ayers has returned to present us with The Unfairground. The record, at a crisp 34 minutes, consists of ten light, airy, 1960s- and 1970s-style pop songs.

It's a classic: short, sweet, and to the point. But most impressively, The Unfairground makes simple, traditional pop songs sound refreshing and new. Ayers' deep and soft Scott Walker-esque vocals float sparingly over catchy wall-of-sound instrumentation. Nothing sounds over-produced or overwhelming; it just sounds like fun.

The Unfairground could be an unearthed, long-lost 1960s studio gem, but really, all that was unearthed was Kevin Ayers.