MP3 Vitor Cunha - Last Train To Wonderland

Intim, close and personal folk-rock and alt-country testimony of last opportunities and chances to move towards a firmer ground. Mellow urban songs about real life and real people.

10 MP3 Songs
FOLK: Folk-Rock, ROCK: Adult Contemporary

Show all album songs: Last Train To Wonderland Songs


Details:
Three and a half years since the debut Strangers At Dawn, Vitor Cunha releases Last Train To Wonderland. Picking up where Strangers left behind, the new collection of 10 songs finds common people on the verge of a change. From the wishfulness of a lesser claustrophobic daily life under a Galician Sunset to a We're Going Home who finds the same character of the first record returning home accepting his own Promised Land.

From the newborn child of Little Bird and through the bitter divorce of the title track, the songs keep moving between country and folk oriented rock with a hushed sense of understatement. Angelina wants to be a star but she cries in her room because "dreams never fade but sometimes run away" while another character begs to be taken to a river so he could "wash the stain" - because "the city burns today" and he's "drowning anyway". Further up on the road the character understands that "it ain't easy living this dream" but he must live it "day by day".

Recorded at his home studio, Last Train To Wonderland finds a darker and moodier Vitor Cunha whereas, at the same time, a much more personal one. The songs more than autobiographical are a testament to the common man, his virtues, rants and bitter disappointments. Last Train To Wonderland is the biography of the thirty-something married with kids common man. It is also the metaphor for living in Portugal during the 2000s. It is not topical - there are more references to Spain than to his own country but the underlying restlessness of a safer place, a Wonderland to which one can take a train, reflect the disappointment of a 30 something years old democratic country that seems to be going nowhere.

"The songs were more personal than before and I wrote them mostly during the December 2006 and early January. I start recording them at my home studio and they kind of grew alone leaving me as the only performer. It wasn't meant as an exercise, to see if I could pull out an album alone. It happened and I'm very pleased with the result. All the songs can be played live, either in a band situation or just me with an acoustic guitar."