Written by: Dave Cantrell

How do I begin – or for that matter fill in then finish – another review of a Pete Astor album? Having been a tried and true fan of the guy’s work since the lofty low-key pop melodic days of The Loft through the stunning, gently sublime work produced by the Weather Prophets – “Almost Prayed” alone should sanctify Astor’s reputation as a songwriter of timeless note but the fact a further clutch of WP gems huddle in the long cast of that one track’s shadow should surely be enough to melt away any and all skeptics’ doubts – and then, due that unbreakable aesthetic grip having been thus established, hunted down and subsequently treasured every solo effort since (we’ll spare you the ‘here’ ‘here’ ‘here’ list of links, just know it’s rather exhaustive) one could reasonably believe that all’s been said that need be said regarding Mr. Astor’s musical output and in truth I myself faced that dilemma. With thousands of words of ‘ink’ already spilled over the past decade-plus I had to wonder, given the possibility that maybe that once seemingly bottomless well had gone dry, if and where I’d find the language let alone the energy to splay them again across the page but then, in an epiphanic moment came the solution from – where else – Pete himself in the form of this engaging, expansive backwards glance in and out of the long ago ‘then’ to the still vital ‘now’ (the span here ricochets pinball-like over the past forty years). Gems, corkers, sly asides of the uncommonly literary, all that – and more! – is generously available to address whatever lacunae one may have feared had finally fallen not just upon the ever-reliable artist himself but as well your ever-faithful scribe. Which is to say, yes – and to put it briefly – Unsent Letters, in its way, just by its very existence, explores the loneliness inside the peculiar ‘givingness’ of the creative life where the have-to-do-it is in a constant standoff with the why-do-it that fortunately (and certainly in Pete’s case) finds the latter always surrendering to the compulsive drive of the former. In his case, though, as with most true artists, it’s not so much ‘art for art’s sake’ as ‘heart for heart’s sake,’ a fact made unabashedly apparent from the off on this solid-to-brilliant collection.

With its tick-tock clave-like percussion underscoring its mood of time’s inevitable drip drip drip passing, opener “Three Score Years,” having just been written last year which happened to mark Astor’s sixty-fourth spin around the sun, unfurls as an elegy of sorts, one somehow equally loving and a touch biting as it addresses the potential – eventual? inevitable? – short shrift we’re given as we dance across the mortal coil, it also happens to be gently rich in all things Astorian, i.e. melody, humanity, wondrous pop reflection. A propitious start then, wot? But, really, what the hell would any sane pop connoisseur expect? Well, right, exactly.

From there we ride the tides as the artist’s heart unpacks its archives, darting with a deft assurance from this year to that year with zero concern for the stuffy rule of chronology but instead driven by an instinct that privileges intuitive continuity over the blind dictates of the calendar. Hence do we drive through the pop and perk of the brief but damn near timeless “Stop Go” penned and left for resurrection in 2016; the Hal’s Eggs-period “John Jonah” that’s what one might call ‘lightheartedly fierce,’ an apt reaction given its impetus was derived from the Rudy Mills ska/reggae classic “John Jones;” the poignantly rendered “When Vincent Started to Play” which unspools like a dirge overlaid by one of life’s most personally consequential Polaroids that just happens to capture, almost by accident,  one of ‘those’ moments when the pendulum swings in a direction it’s not swung before which may be read as overwrought but in Pete’s hands is an unrivalled, diaristic pearl of a song. And thus do we continue our travels through one individual artist’s (inimitable, mind) sonic map of the UK indie landscape as it swerved and developed from one millennium into the next with, as it happens, our favorite cool cousin as our tour guide.

Be it 1984’s “The Nothing Box” doing what it can to unlock what at the time was another of the obscure puzzles attached to the Beatles that has since been solved; “Every Happy Day” from 1989, resting on a sparse (but all the more effective for it) bed of cello and bass that’s basically a postcard sent forward from his 19-year-old self that arrives at the current Pete’s doorstep with some emotional postage due; the spry density of “Uncrowned”‘s first two minutes that with a sort of sly sleight-of-hand slips in its last minute into an affecting, lived-in, later-in-life moment of reflection that has the hush of midnight about it and is thereby a type of quiet centerpiece anchoring the album entire, fitting in a way as it arrives exactly midway down the tracklist and was penned at the very birth of the new century (rather pure Pete, that). Then there’s “The Good Ship” from ten years hence, a mournfully plainsung lament inspired by the story of the titular, much-loved pub facing not just closure but, insult to injury, is destined to become mere flats; there’s 2013’s “Another Perfect Day,” jaunty but with a touch of overcast encroaching on an otherwise sunny forecast; there’s the subtly ungentled fury from 1989 in the form of “When Did You Die” that proves once again that the word ‘withering’ seldom if ever requires a raised voice and is in fact likely more effective the more measured it is which brings us with a wandering inevitability to intimate finale “My Little World,” the paean of paeans to the loner/artist/writer/you-name-it that has found within their confines of their particular garret however defined that rarest of qualities, peace, even if it is one duly fraught like it usually is for anyone that wrestles with an often-reticent muse of the daily.

Now, much of what you’ve just read in the foregoing paragraph might reasonably – perhaps inescapably – lean you toward the impression of a kind of desolate delicacy and though that’s certainly a fair cop the fact remains that, as is the case throughout the Pete Astor ouevre, the songs themselves at their tensile, visceral-slash-gentle center, almost magically, tend to uplift. Maybe it’s the craft inherent, maybe it’s Astor’s innate streak of affable incorrigibility or, who knows, perhaps it’s down to how suunny it is outside my window at the moment but the truth is that at every step of the way through this inerrant collection there’s a sense that just the fact the heretofore overlooked and never heard are at last allowed to stretch themselves out and breathe in the wide-open air brings its own intrinsic joy to the proceedings. Astor’s tone, as just about anyone’s would likely be that’s lived through the last 40+ years, is a bit doleful here and there but it’s a quality outweighed by the pure resilient joy – to these ears, at least – of their mere appearance. Yes, spoken like a true fan but then again, who isn’t?