Edgar Breau is frontman of Canadian psych-punk legends Simply Saucer, still going strong after 40 years. The band’s classic Cyborgs Revisited featured in TNPC last year. We invited Edgar to write about one of his own favourite underrated albums. As lost gems go, this takes some beating…
I found this beguiling LP by Manchester singer songwriter Craig Davies on an afternoon foray through the junk store aisles of Bibles for Mission thrift store on Upper Wellington St. on Hamilton Ontario’s ‘mountain’, as we call it, really it’s an escarpment. There lying next to the usual Mantovani, Percy Faith, James Last. polka assortments, scratchy beer stained country albums and obscure hillbilly gospel local legends, was an LP on Rough Trade by someone I had never heard of but which I picked up, curious . The record was entitled Like Narcissus, the cover a blurred orangey blotchy photo of Craig. My copy was a ‘Special Low Price LP Limited Edition’, used of course, and at 49 cents, a real bargain as I would soon discover. The insert told me that the great Danny Thompson, founding member of Pentangle played stand up bass on it. Recorded in 1988, the songs are timeless classics sung in a strange, oddly adaptable quivering voice at times reminiscent of Marc Bolan, Tom Waits, Bowie perhaps but finally in the last analysis totally Craig Davies and strikingly original.
There’s a bluesy, New Orleans folk jazz beat poety approach on all the material. It’s a rainy day record, darkly comic at times, romantic. Think the Buckleys, a bit Scott Faganish, I dunno you decide. A find! Worth the trip to a most unlikely place to find a cult artist of this stature. I’m ordering his second 1990’s offering, Groovin’ on a Shaft Cycle. Can’t wait!!
Edgar Breau (November 2017)
The New Perfect Collection 