Colin Vearncombe is such a quintessentially British singer / songwriter, just like his generation-mate Lloyd Cole, who you may be surprised to know is still going on in 2015. For both people in their mid-fifties, the commercial peak has been about thirty years ago. In the case of Vearncombe, better known as Black, it was actually his debut album Wonderful Life from 1987, of which Sweetest Smile,
… the Morrissey-esque Everything Is Coming Up Roses and especially the title song became hits. The singer from Liverpool is now on his eleventh studio album, the seventh of which under the pseudonym Black. On Blind Faith, a jazzy audio record that grows with every turn, Vearncombe still appears to have a very pleasant voice and a ditto sense of melancholy. Prize songs are the drawn-out opener The Love Show, the warm Who You Are and the bare piano ballad Sunflower. Black, it may be calmly concluded, is not only still going, he is still going stróng. (RME)more
