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Review: 'LUCKY BONES'
'Matchstick Men'   

-  Label: 'Lucky Bones Promotions'
-  Genre: 'Alt/Country' -  Release Date: '18th May 2018'-  Catalogue No: 'LBCD005'

Our Rating:
Lucky Bones is essentially Eamonn O’Connor, a singer songwriter from Ireland. His first two albums were recorded in Austin, Texas with Stephen Ceresia at the helm but this one, produced by Gavin Glass, was recorded closer to home in Dublin. This change of location goes some way towards explaining the album's more intimate, less expansive, mood.

O’Connor claims the synth sounds were influenced by The Cure and the early albums by The Verve but the soporific mood often has more in common with Dire Straits.

O'Connor has often performed solo, or as part of a duo, but here he has a full band backing in the form of Leon Kennedy (bass), Conor Miley (keys), and Binzer Brennan (drums).

The title track opens the album in a downbeat fashion with reflections on the loss of his father. The Things (We Take In) is similarly muted and dwells on the need to face up to truth with the strong implication that this might raise up some demons.

Things pick up a little with Breathe andI Can Feel It Coming; both have driving beats but are designed more for a trip down to the shops than freewheeling along some lost highway.

Matchstick Men is a fairly short record with the 8 songs lasting just over half an hour. Neon Morgue strikes me as the defining piece with some sobering reflections on aging and dying which opens with the line: "We were once so wild but now we are sedated". The sadness behind such words is evident and conveys an air of fatalism and regret that dominates the tone of this album.

The last track, The Walls, is, at 6:37 minutes, the longest and the closing one and a half minutes sounds like the band have suddenly woken up to the idea that the record needs to convey a little more energy and fight. Unfortunately, this rousing instrumental finale fails to help shake the impression that this is the work of an artist all too conscious of feeling comfortably numb.

Lucky Bones' website
  author: Martin Raybould

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LUCKY BONES - Matchstick Men