Cantinero
British composer and multi-instrumentalist Chris Hicken (Cantinero) deep thoughts and informed reflections find their way into the songs on his new album, Better for the Metaphor — a literate, lovingly crafted pop affair that displays Hicken's talent for keenly observed insights about the complicated times in which we live. As a result, Better for the Metaphor offers Hicken's perceptive take on American sense of entitlement ("Go Getter"), the Bush administration's manufactured culture of fear ("Safe"), the dangers of trumpeting one's ideology ("My House"), the societal acceptance of anorexia ("Thinner"), and even a sing-songy ditty about using anti-depressants to make it all go away ("Medicated"). It's food for thought, but it goes down easy thanks to Hicken's prodigious gift for melody (practically a birthright for a British singer-songwriter). "I do have an incredible sweet tooth for melody," he says. "So I wanted to make the tunes poppy and catchy and accessible so that you can sing along without really knowing what the song is about."
Cantinero now creates in a rural environment, whicht is a far cry from the urban setting of his East Village apartment where Hicken recorded his debut album, the critically well-received Championship Boxing, which was released by Artemis Records in 2004. That album — a combination of live instrumentation and subtle electronic textures that Britain's music bible Q magazine called "a winning fusion of strummed acoustics and brawny ballads" with "deliciously poignant lyrics" — documented what Hicken considers "a dynamic shift in my life." arriving in America in 1993 with a pop-rock group called Bigmouth. When Bigmouth dissolved, Hicken spent seven years working as a bartender (hence the moniker "Cantinero," a nickname bestowed on him by a Spanish co-worker).WACBIZ welcomes this very talented composer and producer and his "up to the minute" politically conscious songs!
