JOHN E VISTIC
‘MODERN LOVE’
Produced by Paul Corkett
John E Vistic’s new album ‘Modern Love’ was recorded straight to two and a half inch tape at Bristol’s Toybox Studios by Ali Chant (PJ Harvey) and produced by Paul Corkett (Nick Cave, The Cure, The Horrors). All songs were written by Singer Songwriter and multi-instrumentalist, John E Vistic (except track 4, a monumental cover of Nick Cave’s ‘The Weeping Song’).
‘Modern Love’ is an epically amped-up album of dark love songs and familial meditations played with electrifying power by Vistic’s legendary rock n roll band – Adam Coombes (Keys, String arrangements and Backing Vox) Guy Fowler (Bass), and Dan Clibery (Drums and Percussion) with stunning additional vocals from Daisy Chapman (Crippled Black Phoenix).
A tremendous 12 months in 2009 started with JEV slaying their competitors at the Michael Eavis-judged Rockstar Bands competition, in which the band performed at the Pilton Party in front of 4,000 people alongside Dizzee Rascal and Florence and the Machine. Simon Harvey from Rockstar Bands explained what made the Vistics stand out from the thousands of entrants:
“The John E Vistic Experience have something special... the flavour of old school rock and roll delivered with an originality and freshness that makes it appealing, an energy that is hypnotising
and a swagger that draws you in and spits you out when they're done.”
Part of the band’s prize was to be the first band announced on the line-up for Glastonbury 2010 where they played three shows during the weekend including a set on the BBC Introducing stage which led long-term fan, 6 Music’s Tom Robinson to declare them “the uncrowned kings of the West Country”.
With his whisky-drenched vocal, incredible guitar style and hypnotic stage presence, John E. Vistic is a well-known figure on the Bristol and West Country live circuit, and he has been noted by more than one critic as the natural successor to Nick Cave or Fred Sonic Smith. Inspired by great song writers such as Cave, Cohen and Dylan as well as guitar bands, like The Drones, The Stooges, and Dinosaur Jr, John E Vistic’s mission is to deliver powerful and iconic rock n roll songs with a raw and bleeding heart.
The band have honed their art through their blisteringly hot live shows - from high-profile supports to busy headline gigs - that regularly leave the critics searching for superlatives:
There wasn’t a moment’s respite or dip in either momentum or quality tonight; he tackled Nick Cave’s The Weeping Song head-on, with no qualms and no flinching, and as he shed first his suit jacket and then his shirt, he walked, ran and finally jumped into the vortex of what he and his band had created – beautiful, ugly, pure, dirty rock and roll.
CrackerJack ‘Thunderbolt’ Review 2010
Sideburns,shit-kickers and light-blue-touchpaper rock’n’roll. The Vistics press pedal
to metal and motor through a blistering set of old school values such as breakneck
guitar solos, greasy Hammond and vinyl trousers
Venue Magazine (Glastonbury Festival review, June 2010)
To date JOHN E VISTIC have also supported (amongst others) The John Spenser Blues Explosion, C.W. Stoneking, The Bookhouse Boys, Middle Class Rut, and Alabama 3 (whose front-man Larry Love was so impressed by his opening act that he introduced himself on stage as “John E. Vistic”. Other festivals for the band in 2010 have included the Bulldog Bash, Trowbridge Village Pump (where the band played two, entirely different one hour sets) and a headline set at the Bristol Festival.
An early special pre-album release version of the track ‘Til My Loneliness Has Gone is also available now on vinyl with Impedance Records in Australia.
THE ALBUM:
‘Modern Love’
Track order: (with vistic’s comments on the songs]
(1) Garden of Love
‘A gothic romance of love gone wrong’.
(2) Hard Luck Story
‘A brief parable on the existential commonalities between the death of Michael Jackson and the life of a modern teenager’
(3) New Beginning
‘The Vistic rebirth anthem: freedom and individuality at any cost’
(4) Weeping Song
‘One of my favourite Nick Cave songs. A lament for the lost meaning of suffering in a world full of sorrow; the guilt of a son whose moral frailty causes his father pain’
(5) Aquitaine
‘A brief love song for a girl I loved – her name was Eleanor’
(6) Til My Loneliness Has Gone
‘On how material desires and vainglorious pursuits are no substitute for love’
(7) Tenement Song/Thomas the Doubter
‘The neighbourhoods are being ripped apart by change, vanity and isolation abound, but even the wounds of Christ must be tested. Truth is sacred. Inspired by the Caravaggio painting’
(8) Modern Love
‘All is vanity. This is the Generation X-Factor, in which love songs abound but fall into an ever increasing vacuum of feeling’
(9) Into the night
‘Inspired by Celine’s great book of similar title, a desolation song in which the singer feels that the only thing to save him from the grasp of eternal night is a kiss from his sweetheart and his will not to give up’
[10] Aint nobody loves you [like I do]
‘A love song with a twist: sometimes true love is a death struggle for complete ownership of the other’
[11] Symphony of song
‘Based on a trip back to my homeland in Australia: a series of strange and disturbing episodes occurred in which finally the only saviour was (as it always is) music’
