Sure bands are often influenced by music from times gone by, some even do decent replications, but so few times does someone channel that inspiration and influence in something dynamically unique. That's where The Voluntary Butler Scheme aka Rob Jones comes in. On his debut album At Breakfast, Dinner, Tea., Jones calls forth his '50s and '60s influences to create innocently sweet, subtle, bright sunny indie-pop that will melt even the iciest of hearts. His melodies are infectiously well-crafted, memorable, singable, catchy, and his lyrics are smart in this remarkably off-kilter way where they both do and don't matter at the same time.
Probably the most surprising thing about Jones' album is that he plays the majority of the instruments you hear on it. This might be surprising to some who notice that ensemble sound that he manages to get from himself and is the reason Jones goes down as one of my favorite one-man-bands. He's assisted by a couple friends on several tracks to play additional instruments (mostly horns), but you'd be surprised how little times he actually is. He's assisted on only 4 out of the 14 tracks by only four people. That's impressive.
One of the things I love about At Breakfast, Dinner, Tea is that even though he splits the album into three sections, the songs all work together. Several of the songs he had written before work on the album actually serve to anchor the album in this remarkably gratifying way. Usually when someone predominantly plays drums like Rob Jones (who used to be the drummer for retro indie pop group The School), melody comes almost second to rhythm but not here. His melodies are fully flushed out and just really fun to listen to. So fans of talented multi-instrumentalists specializing in unique melodic indie-pop rejoice: The Voluntary Butler Scheme is after your heart and sure to win it with his charmingly quirky debut album.
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