Robert Vincent - In This Town You're Owned (2020) Hi-Res

The eagerly awaited follow-up to Robert Vincent’s 2018’s sophomore release, I’ll Make The Most Of My Sins, which earned him the UK Americana Music Association’s UK Album of The Year, finds the Liverpool-based singer-songwriter in musically expansive mood with three tracks passing the five-minute mark and one clocking in at just over nine.

Produced by Ethan Johns, In This Town You’re Owned is a response to the mood of the times when it was written, the songs informed, socially and politically, by both life in Liverpool and the state of the world. Indeed, waltzing album opener This Town, featuring Anna Corcoran on piano, Robbie Taylor’s fiddle and the ‘town choir’, addresses both the particular and universal in its call for community solidarity. With the music swelling, he sings “In this town you’ve got to see their light/In this town you’ve got help them fight/In this town you’ve got to own their pain”, but also cautions that, in such homogeneous situations, “You better know your friend and know your foe/You better test the water with your toe”, and hold on to who you are, warning that “If you let it own you you’ll pay the price”.