Maybe if James Joyce were alive today, he’d be making music instead of writing books, and A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man might sound a lot like the songs conjured by Get Cape. Wear Cape. Fly on the fantastic album The Chronicles of a Bohemian Teenager. This barely-out-of-his-teens Londoner was born Sam Duckworth before discovering his eye-catching alias in a Batman video game. The guitar-slinging troubadour pushes the singer-songwriter model into the 21st century, fully equipped with a laptop loaded with skittering, nervy beats that wouldn’t sound out of place on a Björk record. He freely flaunts his personal as well as politically charged influences (e.g., Billy Bragg), but always with the uplifting, life-affirming optimism that comes with youth. Already a hit in the U.K., he’s one scene in Grey’s Anatomy away from taking America too.
(Originally published in the LA Weekly, 3/07)
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