45/Shine

Half a New Yorker, half a Dubliner, Alien Envoy somehow manages to combine the worst of both cities. As with his previous ‘Cast Adrift’ single, ‘45’ sits on the wrong side of too clever by half, an ode to the great singles of our age made up entirely of said singles’ titles. Awfully clever it may be, a particularly good song it isn’t. Scott Maher is making a similar move, although ‘Shine’ suggests that his music has already packed its bags and caught the first flight out. For all its attention to melody and hooks, it’s an oddly jarring experience, as if someone has failed to assemble the song in quite the right order.