A touch of Spanish guile is here combined with an unswerving belief in the power of love to surely catapult the debut album from SHANE BARRY & THE DISTRACTIONS up there with the success stories of 2008.
Opener ‘Let It Be Known’ is 80’s kitsch Top 40 revisited. Not so much absorbing as high stimulus, it’s a welcoming waltzer ride through one of pop’s more soulful corridors. Stomping and twanging its way through the middle eight for the dancefloor heroes, the pull is hard to resist as the record casts off an irretrievable charm.
Add to that the brass fanfare and Barry’s hollowed-out drawl, and this kind of rattling thunder begins to reek of a dizzying sophistication. Like all of the finest music that hails from the Emerald Isle, there is an eccentric side to all of this and as a result the record hangs on to your attention with minimum effort.
The shimmering Wurlitzer-driven melancholy builds and builds during the rocksteady gem ‘Like I Told You So’. It’s a breathtaking sound that suddenly pulls right out of the downbeat, whilst oddball rock n’roller ‘A Man Called Gerald’ is a frenetic boogie-woogie through the limited choices and ever-increasing greyness of everyday life. The boredom is not so much alleviated as sledgehammered out of consciousness by this all-consuming sonic assault.
Elsewhere, the keys drop like pint pots from the balcony, and groovers skid and slide on the floor below. ‘Greatest Thing To Fall’ is Barry’s extreme effort to make us see sense, and the messy results demand your blurriest attention.
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‘The World Won’t Stop’ fair simmers and shimmers, with the melody deliberately and deliciously low-key within the heightening drama. As far as subject-matter goes, what we’re offered here is a wonderfully cataclysmic, off key look at the bigger picture. Say no more, who knows who?
The thumping backbeat of ‘There’s No Time’ establishes the number’s possessed and psychoactive nature long before the bongo-driven reverb and auto-fire guitars kick, pepper and punch the eardrums with wild abandon. Reminiscent and retrospective, rose-tinted and relentless, this could be the record’s dizzy highlight!
Descent into free-jazz saxophone sleaze is a head-mashing way to conclude any collection – here it’s absorbing, and euphonious enough to put a smile on my face, and the band play it bone dry just to be sure.
Raucous and reflective in turns, this record drags you through life’s mundane depths and lowest lows in order to sling you back up there with the stars, again and again. To this end, SHANE BARRY & THE DISTRACTIONS have succeeded in putting some of the much-missed/mourned mystery and romance back into pop music. Miss this blurry and beautiful collection at your peril!
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