This is Vin's most accessible album. Recorded with a back up band of estimable musicians, some of the tracks have a folk-rock feel while others are acoustic ballads. Then there is Vin's virtuoso tin-whistle playing and a great electic guitar solo playing Bach's 'Jesu, joy of man's desiring' giving the album a surprise twist at the end.
But to appreciate Mr Garbutt, you have to listen to the lyrics. On this album they vary from discussing the fact that we have built our lives around the car rather than vice versa and the consequential effect on our 'green and pleasant land', to the ethics of cloning embryos for organs, to coal-mining (viewed in two different ways in consecutive songs), to the tale of an Irish girl travelling to Britain for an abortion, to the Kurdistan genocide (written pre Gulf War #1). It sounds heavy, but with Vin's sense of melody and pathos it is both thought-provoking and pleasant to listen to.