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MP3 Major Bullhorn - Kings and Queens of the Drunken City

An eclectic,alternative mix of songs detailing the ups and downs of life and love in the Drunken City.....

11 MP3 Songs in this album (44:13) !
Related styles: Rock: Americana, Folk: Alternative Folk, Mood: Intellectual

People who are interested in Elliot Smith Neil Young Wilco should consider this download.


Details:
Album Review (by Tom Ryan)

We went to the beach
And you complained about the sand

So opens the new album from Major Bullhorn. They have a great facility for the striking opening line:

When I get up off the floor some things are gonna change

Thing have certainly changed on this album in comparison to their debut ‘Growth and Repair’. I found this album more sophisticated, more accomplished – musically and lyrically and a bit more ‘polished’ overall. On the earlier album, it seemed as if some songs had been finished off without truly living up to the promise of the opening – sometimes reverting to a certain ‘tweeness’ (if that’s a word) for the sake of resolution – if memory serves, there was a rhyme between ‘sandwich’ and ‘marriage’ which always mars for me an otherwise nicely crafted song.

Back to that opening track - this is one of the piano based tracks on the album that succeeds. This is certainly no simple ‘boy loves girl’ song, quite the opposite – it manages to eloquently capture anger and perhaps, hatred, skillfully in a melody that carries you along without being completely predictable. A strong opening statement.

‘See you beg’ sees the guys really hitting the groove. We are in guitar territory here. Not that I know much about it but the production here to me seems a bit stripped down and the song is all the better for it – honest vocals, honest and very steady drumming and beautifully played variations on guitar. For me this shows that these guys know where the roots of ‘pop’ music lie.

‘You were with me’ was the track that I liked most on first hearing – and as often happens – now it is the one that I have most problems with. The lyric is undoubtedly beautiful – sad and just ambiguous enough to let each listener fill in his own gaps. It’s the piano, guys. The piano playing is spot on in terms of technical ability but I just feel it is the wrong style for the song and it overwhelms a really classy lyric. (Maybe I am being very pernickety here but it reminds me also of a piano piece that that professor of music from Limerick used to play and which became very popular and it annoyed me intensely. It was like he was trying to play sean nos on a grand piano with too much ornamentation and I don’t think that worked. So, don’t fret too much, Major Bullhorn, this might be all about me and that bastard from Limerick.) Their piano player is going to hate me but I think a very quite style here (a bit like Keith Jarrett on ‘The Melody at Night, with You’, would make this track a killer. That said, I would not be surprised if this track is the most popular on the album – not the first time I would be out of step with the masses.

‘Jesus I’m a Young Man’ is for me one of the piano songs that works really well. The vocal is crisp and clear and yet emotionally rich. (The ghost of The Blue Nile is around). Nice polarity in the lyric between Jesus and the Devil.

‘The Drunken City’ marks the appearance of what I call a ‘dirty guitar’ sound and this really kicks the whole thing up the ass. I almost don’t want to spoil this track by being too descriptive, same as you would with a thriller movie. Let me just say that the lyric is slightly surreal and yet grounded in everyday language and it all makes sense in the way that poetry does or the way things look after a few pints. If this is the new Major Bullhorn, sign me up.

‘Wreck’ is a bluesy gem with some great playing on guitars. A word here on the drumming – I feel the drummer is not showy but he is like a reliable full back throughout the album. That is often where tracks like this go awry.

‘Most People’ is quieter and is another track that succeeds in terms of production, playing and singing. I just felt our old friend ‘Mr Twee’ is around in a line like ‘I’m glad you want to be my friend’. Maybe I’m just too cynical.

‘Green Blues’ has, from the outset, a hypnotic chant-like quality which sustains itself well throughout the song. A song that lives within itself – nice play on the words ‘black stuff’ – is that my depression or my pint of porter. The song is ‘Green Blues’ after all – the kind of blues we get in Ireland perhaps? Nothing out of place here.

‘I only wanna be with You’ – this is cheeky – a song featuring another song, and a Dusty Springfield classic at that. This shows that this band have courage and panache because they bring it off. They could have just bit the dust (awful pun!) but they somehow manage to hold the listener within their own song while evoking one of the great pop songs in the canon. I think the trick is the introduction of some T-Rex like guitars which surprise and delight the ear.

‘Bad News’ sees the piano rolled out again on track that name checks ‘Teenage Fanclub’ and which itself, for my money, would not be out of place on a Neil Young album. (Might be better, even, than some of the great one’s filler tracks on more recent albums.) A song about depression that does not depress.

‘The Grass Arena’ has some lovely guitar on the opening and an ‘echo’ in the production. The song contains the classic line:

‘Cos some of us are stuck inside
The person we don’t wanna be

The ghost of Kris Kristofferson and ‘Casey’s Last Stand’ is around in the subterranean, desperate atmosphere but this is Major Bullhorn’s song and a fine, if muted, end to a very good album.

Overall, this is hugely enjoyable, in spite of some of my criticisms. I listen to it regularly in the car and the title track is on my ‘A Few Glasses of Wine’ playlist – take my word, that is high praise. It is also the kind of album that would have you already looking forward to the next instalment because there is such development since the last one.


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