John Cunningham

Although John Cunningham is British, he lives and works in France. Like his fellow musical expatriate Bill Pritchard (or for that matter, Prefab Sprout or the High Llamas), Cunningham's elegant brand of pop music owes a certain debt to smooth pre-rock classic pop of the Cole Porter school, mixed with a touch of Bacharach, Wilson, McCartney, and Costello. Unlike those artists, however, Cunningham infuses his music with an almost Nick Drake-like acoustic vibe that suits his delicate yet melodic compositions beautifully. (This John Cunningham is, of course, not to be confused with the Scottish fiddle player who was a member of Silly Wizard and other folk groups.) Born in Liverpool, England, in 1969, Cunningham attended school in the East Sussex town of Brighton, where he quickly fell in with the city's thriving artistic and musical community. After a brief and apparently unsatisfying tenure in the Curtain Twitchers alongside Jane Fox of Marine Girls fame in the mid-'80s, Cunningham decided that a solo career was more suitable for him. A demo cassette landed him at the tiny indie La-Di-Da, which released Cunningham's debut EP, Backwards Steps, in 1989. Produced by ex-Housemartins guitarist Stan Cullimore, Backwards Steps owes rather a lot to that band, and while the EP is entertaining, it's not particularly representative of Cunningham's later work. Cunningham's first full album, 1991's Shankly Gates, is much more stripped down and intimate than Backwards Steps, with jazzy piano and subtle trumpet and oboe accents. It was rapturously received by the French press, which compared Cunningham to artists like Robert Wyatt and late-period Talk Talk, but as would be the case throughout Cunningham's career, sales did not match the critical reaction. Cunningham's third release,...