Simon Murphy's day job in County Antrim in Northern Ireland is as a psychiatric nurse and he looks a thoughtful, serious kind of guy on the album cover. However, in quoting Father Ted's "Down with this sort of thing" on the sleeve, you get the message that the 12 songs on his debut album are not meant to be earnest, protest songs.
Although some, if not all, of the tunes may have started life as acoustic-driven folk songs, they have now been orchestrated and fleshed out to resemble commercial pop . “I’m trying to write the songs I want to hear on the radio", Murphy explains. Fortunately, this does not mean they have been dumbed-down for mass consumption.
The self-loathing he expresses in Here Goes Nothing ("I don't belong in my head") and the muted anger of Not In My Name make these the most downbeat songs here. The latter is one of two to feature Kaz Hawkins on backing vocals (I Have A Voice is the other).
The rest of the tunes have a much cheerier, defiantly affirmative, character with tracks like My Baby and The Life Of Brian’s Son reflecting the emphasis on looking on the bright side.
Murphy's strength is that he knows what makes for a catchy tune but is savvy enough to resist the platitudes of standard boy-girl songs. I Smell A Rat might start with a Pretty Woman riff and feature 'shoo-be-dooby-do' backing vocals but, if you hadn't realised before, the closing line ("Don't love me, yeah yeah yeah") confirms that this is all quite tongue-in-cheek.
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On the opening track Once Upon A Time, he sings The only thing I know, I don't know nothing" and a similarly self deprecating tone can also be found in The Idiot, which includes the great line: "I can see clearly now - as clear as mud" and ends, rather than begins, with the standard blues refrain "I woke up this morning".
Murphy is clever, but never smug, and this smart set of songs is a reminder that 'radio-friendly' should not be automatically be intended as an insult.
Simon Murphy's website
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