It's A Long Way From That Sort Of Thing You Were Raised...

Warm indie-rock awash with the summer harmonies of late 60s pop culture, the début album from My Brother Woody is proving to be quite a pleasant indulgence since arriving through the Frequency-Ireland postbox last week. Described before as The Beach Boys meets Teenage Fanclub, the material is buoyantly harmonic, yet more often than not remains delicate in delivery.

The work of the new Irish outfit based around the song-writing skills of Michael Cleare, the album opens in an elegant and delectably frail manner with Another Wave of Harmony before leading into the confident and uplifting brass sounds of Wish I Was A DJ, injecting quite a jazz-pop lift to that Beach Boys summer vibe. Third track, Hanging Around perhaps sounds a touch too close to the mainstream rock of the 80s ala Brian Adams territory, as if custom tailored for major station radio play, but elsewhere the album is nicely poised between dippy and melancholic moods, and is quite a triumph of indie-pop. Choice tracks on the album come later, including the dizzy chemistry in Super Serotonin Girl and the more delicate and melancholia entrenched moods of When Summer Comes Around and Not Exactly What You Dreamed Of. As an album which closes with a song titled I Only Like Songs With Bops Oohs & Aahs, its hard to know for sure where the irony ends and the rebuff begins, but regardless of which way you want to look at it, this is an album of genuine merit none the less. 8/10.

Related Links:

http://www.myspace.com/mybrotherwoody