Album Review: Billy Liar – Some Legacy

Billy Liar has been steadily building a reputation as a punk troubadour touring across the UK, Europe and America with his acoustic guitar. However, the release of his debut album “Some Legacy” sees his songs of friendship, despair, tolerance, love, anxiety and life backed up with a full live band. Having not managed to catch Billy Liar live I can’t make a direct comparison between the two, but you can tell that the eleven songs contained on his debut full length have been honed on the road and I can only imagine that the addition of the full band gives them an added drive and impetus

The View From Here opens Some Legacy in fine frantic punk style and gives you that perfect track one, side one hit that we all crave, this is followed by an immediate shift in style with The Righteous And The Rats that has a kinda Social Distortion transplanted North of the border kinda feel. The album constantly skips between styles but always maintains a solid punk rock core, the perfect classic punk rock feel of I Still Struggle slams into the anguished Pills before the album returns to Billy Liar‘s acoustic roots with the heartfelt Independent Lives. It’s difficult to pick a favourite from Some Legacy as I found a new one with the start of each track, although the political rallying call of Change was looking like edging that title until I hit the album’s haunting piano led finale, Less Vegas.

The personal nature of the songwriting adds depth to the album, not least on the impressive and deeply personal Noose, there is no filler or generic love songs on Some Legacy, every track is personal and written from the heart, which as any fan of Bill Hicks knows is exactly how it should be. Some Legacy provides moments that are familiar to anyone who’s embedded in the punk scene, but crucially it never slips into the overly familiar generic punk template, but there are also introspective moments that blend perfectly into the electic mix. Some Legacy is an appropriately named album as that’s exactly what this near perfect eleven track album is.

Some Legacy can be streamed and purchased via Red Scare Industries here, you can also purchase Some Legacy on physical formats via Big Cartel here.

Billy Liar‘s website can be found here.