Dean Blunt & Joanne Robertson - Backstage Raver

Savour the occasion - a Dean Blunt record available in an actual real life record shop! Not sure what we've done to deserve the honour, but we'll take it nonetheless. Blunt-heads will by now be well acquainted with Backstage Raver, a collaboration with long-standing collaborator Joanne Robertson released digitally earlier this year, that further saw the pair indulge their late 90s Seattle cosplay fantasies. Cosplay or not, Blunt is very good at this kind of thing and Robertson has the voice for it, a coffee shop culture siren with way more than the requisite amount of grain to her voice. Imagine that Mary Lou Lord and Greg Dulli union the public never did get, and then add in Iceage's Elias Ronnenfelt (who shows up on one track in the middle of the album) to seal the deal and complete the circle. It's interesting to see Blunt become increasingly sincere as he's got older, these eight mostly short tracks considerably more morose and charged with longing and desire than where he started out over ten years ago. Still, the record is called Backstage Raver and there's a bit of a Bonnie & Clyde outlaw feel to his partnership with Robertson, as manifest in songs like 'Repeat Offender' and 'OFELIA'. Age may have softened him, but Blunt still has the edge on most.