Vincent Vincent and the Villians bio.

Brand new, second hand.

They’ve got the name of a Hi-De-Hi show band, but pop-doo-wop’n’rollers Vincent Vincent And The Villains are avowedly not a Maplin’s holiday camp throwback. They tout energetic, catchy-as-hell music they consider “quite modern”, actually.

Some people have mistakenly dubbed Vincent Vincent And The Villains “rockabilly”. But Charlie Feathers, Gene Vincent or The Cramps, even, they aren’t. VV&TV meld Dexy’s Midnight Runners’ work ethic with Orange Juice catchiness, pop it in a pot with Lonnie Donegan skiffle, add a raggle-taggle pub singalong and kit the whole shebang out in natty secondhand threads.



And at a residential recording retreat in deepest Lincolnshire, this London fourpiece is defying the bleak midwinter, finishing off their spring-fresh, good-time debut LP for EMI. “It’s made using Pro-tools software,” says jaunty frontman Vincent Vincent – not some retro magnetic tape contraption then, as their very 50s visual shtick might have you believe.

Vincent is buzzing; he’s ants-in-his-pants excited about the album’s progress. “I’ve slogged years and years for this,” he pipes. “Never given up, and lived in the shittiest dives, like above a cellar in Bethnal Green where they smoked salmon. My room and my clothes stank.” His band’s confident stance is manifested in their sharp dress sense, both on and off-stage. Vincent says he maintains “very high standards of personal hygiene”, even on tour, when launderettes figure highly in the schedule. “But I never use an iron. I find the creases just fall out,” he adds.



VV&TV are very much a live band, although touring hasn’t yet taken them to Vince’s beloved Memphis, the musical mecca he once travelled to “on the proceeds of several car boot sales”. Although this juicy EMI deal could well mean more air miles soon. Whiling away any spare on-tour moments with a book, Vincent’s back is up if you ask for a favourite author or poet. He’s not a fan of literary affectation: “I hate that pretentious shit; when bands w**k on about Rimbaud when they’ve probably only read one poem… We’re a simple, sparse rock’n’roll band,” he continues. “Rock’n’roll is about fun, and not being po-faced about it all.”