Club Rondo

Yet 20 more unreleased tracks from 1969-70. While this isn't the best or most accessible of DJC's archival Siren releases (that honor would go to Lets Do It), it's the most solid clue to Coyne's future directions. Most of the tracks are live-in-the-studio improvisations, which can be both a good and a bad thing for Coyne. As rock singer/songwriters go, he's one of the best (and few, actually) extemporizers around, building narrative poems off the top of his head. (His description of a typically British "Holiday" is a lot more akin to a David Lynch film than a Connie Francis movie.) At the same time, these obviously could have done with a bit of polish. The stream-of-consciousness invectives are as prone to ramble awkwardly as often as they hit home. It's interesting, idiosyncratic stuff, though, Coyne sounding like a mental ward orderly who's starting to identify with his charges to an unhealthy extent. The three Siren CDs on DJC, incidentally, are available separately and as a three-album set, The Siren Years.1 ~ Richie Unterberger|