THE VOLUNTARY BUTLER SCHEME - SINGLE REVIEW

The Voluntary Butler Scheme - Honey In The Gravel Mixture (Split Records) 
The Voluntary Butler Scheme - Honey In The Gravel Mixture

Release Date: 17th March 2014

Normally solo artists go for a title that is shorter than their full name like Prince or Shakira or Beyonce or Pele. Technically one of those is a footballer but what the hey. My point is that the monosyllabically named Rob Jones has inexplicably gone for The Voluntary Butler Scheme as his stage name which makes nobody's life any easier and means I have to type more than if he'd just stuck with Rob Jones. Or I could just stop bitching and get on with the review. 'Honey In The Gravel Mixture' is the next single from the soloist and it is an absolutely wondrous piece of jaunty, brass based indie-pop fun. This is like Badly Drawn Boy singing on a Divine Comedy penned tune that is based on some incidental music from one of the original Herbie films - not the Lohan abominations. A teenage me would have absolutely lapped this up in the mid 90s purely for the sense of fun and obscurity, much the same as I swooned over Out Of My Hair for a couple of years. I'm intrigued to hear the album but The Voluntary Butler Scheme as, based on the two singles I have heard so far, it could well be a masterpiece of English pop songwriting .


Live Dates:


27th March - The Islington, London

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