Nicky Haslam is a popstar again! He sings Illusions. There's a gun....

Society interior decorator and party Zelig, Nicky Haslam, has released another single with video (16mm b/w). It's called Illusions, a title not thought to be inspired by Nicky's crooning ambitions. Bryan Ferry is partly responsible.

It's the second track taken from his album Midnight Matinee, primed for release in 2013. The first single, Total Control, had the honour of my reviewing attention back in August. Click here to savour.

Illusions finds Nicky once again in a wistful, bitter-sweet mood, but this time seeming to vocalise from beneath the depths (or shallows) of the lake on which, in the video, he otherwise drifts in an occasionally oar-less rowing boat, given the gurgly (aquatic?) echo.  

The best part of the video is confined to the opening seconds in which a young woman, lakeside, slow-mo dances in a dandruffy downpour, dragging her long, luxuriant hair over a monochrome mud shore. Later, dramatically, a gun teleports into Nicky's hands which he aims not at himself. But I must stop here. I wouldn't want to spoil it. His love interest has to be nearly 60 years younger than he. But who's counting? 

Nicky's reinvention as a cock-cunting minstrel is just one more surprise in an epic life of self-sustained fantasy. We are his willing extras.

As he sings in Illusions, 'You are in love with pain...'