In my humble opinion, the title of enduring Belfast bard ANDY WHITE'S new album 'Garageband' sells you something of a dummy. I'm not disputing the quality of the tunes contained within, but...well, it's hardly Andy's 'Blood & Chocolate' or 'Fun House'.
Culled from it, lead EP track, 'A Message To You' re-inforces this opinion. Sure, it's a decent song with a big, confident chorus full of well-struck guitars, female backing vocals and White's plaintive voice, but the samples, floaty guitars, faux-psychedelic backwards masking and loops all return this writer to those heady, halcyon early 1990s when Madchester was raving on and indie-dance crossover ruled. I'm not sure this was ever his intention, but - be that as it may - 'Message To You' is a good song, performed with confidence and well worthy of John Leckie's muscular mix.
Most of the remainder of the EP hits the spot comfortably too. Although the impatient call for people to get ready on 'Message To You' ("better look to the future, it's comin' up fast") is replaced by what sounds like a nostalgic Andy referencing the past in Ireland on 'A Long Time Coming' ("hey darlin', you look alright, gonna take you down to Dino's bar tonight" might or might not be a sideways reference to Thin Lizzy's 'The Boys Are Back In Town'), it's couched in another bright, catchy and layered musical backdrop.
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Track three, 'Baby You Can't Go Wrong', meanwhile, doesn't appear on 'Garageband' itself, though it's stylistically relatively similar, if perhaps a little tolerant of louder guitars and stridency in general. It also reminds us that White retains the keys to the 'wry anecdote' cabinet ("Listening to Bacharach and 50 Cent/ I don't know the music or what it meant") even if - on the ensuing 'Folk Song' - he comes over a bit daft and throwaway when he sings "the folk songs have all been sung so many years ago." It's the one place where he presses a little too hard on the 'irony' pedal for this writer's liking.
Still, 'Message To You' is a decent and very hummable EP filled with a goodly quota of intelligent singalongs. Once you get over the misnomer of its' parent album, you'll discover the usual hidden depths of Andy White's talent too. But that review's coming along shortly. Don't be impatient now.
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