By Monk
Asking four out of the five Kipling questions on which us journalists are trained, this is the debut album from Irish solo artist Paul Dillon, who hails from that well-known rock ‘n’ rock outpost of Portumna in picturesque County Galway, Coming in at eight well-constructed tracks, plus five remixes, the big question that has to be answered is if the album lives up to the epic beauty of the landscape which serves as its creative backdrop, or is it as cold and bleak as an Irish winter’s night. Well, the answer is somewhere in between.
Opening with a bass line ripped straight from the Geezer Butler textbook, the opening question of ‘Who Am I’ – which he answers with the album proper’s pejorative closer – quickly takes us down the furrow Dillon is to plough for the rest of the album, and that is the darker side of what many would refer to the ‘New Romantic’ movement as espoused by the likes of Depeche Mode or Simple Minds mixed with the gothicism of contemporary Sisters Of Mercy and the ‘Grimly Fiendish’ era noir-ish explorations of The Damned.
Now, I have to say that this style of music is not my normal horn of mead, but what Dillon has produced is a beautifully crafted album that brings together its gothic and post punk influences into a well-moulded homogeneous whole, with a thoughtful synchronicity permeating each of the eight main tracks.
If this was the late-Eighties/mid-Nineties, when the New Romantic/gothic noir movements were at their height, then the likes of the ‘Medicine’ and ‘Except Me’ no doubt would have been regarded as what the music intelligentsia regard as “chart bothers” and probably would have the execs at MTV creaming their faux leather jeans. And, to be honest, if you’re a fan of that era and sound, you’ll probably being doing something similar what you wrap your ears around this opus.
- ‘Who Why Where What’ is out now. You can get your copy HERE.
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