Roy Moller and The Chain Pier Group - Semicolon

  by John Clarkson

published: 21 / 9 / 2019

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Review

Scottish singer-songwriter Roy Moller is the veteran of five albums but has spent the last few years away from music and concentrating on his alternative career as a poet. His second book of poetry, ‘Be My Baby’, which tells of his adoption in 1963 as a days-old infant and his late discovery in his early 50s of whom his natural parents were, is due out imminently. Now he is back with a new single, ‘Semicolon’, and a new band, the Chain Pier Group. It takes its name from the Chain Pier, a pub in North Edinburgh, which is renowned for its funeral teas and its under-age drinkers from nearby secondary Trinity Academy, which is where both Moller and guitarist David Paul went to school. A classic slab of indie pop, ‘Semicolon’ across its three minute running time exults with comeback. Its exuberant tune throws into its mix a bouncing guitar line, breezy harmonica and even at its end a brief piano solo, while Moller’s vocal, abstract on the surface, reflects on the joys of musically reinventing oneself (“Taking away the letters of my name until I am left with a semicolon/Taking away the tears and the shame until I am left with Leonard Cohen, Billy Joel and Lloyd Cole”). A delightful return from an underrated singer-songwriter.

Track Listing:-

1 Semicolon