Any band that self-releases a CD this lovely-looking deserves kudos: it’s a lot harder to choose the expensive gatefold cover over the cheap-ass paper slip covers when it’s coming out of your own savings. But as much as we’d love to, we’re not going to pretend that At Evensong from Galway’s Pier Nineteen is bloody essential in the same way as the debuts of Franz Ferdinand, Arctic Monkeys or even the Velvet Underground. It is, however, a worthwhile addition to the current crop of homegrown LPs that are doing us proud.
Evoking the same emotions as Snow Patrol and Duke Special, they follow suit by using a staple of acoustic or college rock tunes underpinned with everything from a horn section (‘The Unfortunate’) to Channel-1 esque electronica in ‘Is It Automatic?’.
That said, the common thread isn’t only the atmospherics and Keith Mullins’ gorgeously lackadaisical vocals. More importantly – and worryingly - it’s a distinct lack of punch, the very same problem that means the listener’s not so much knocked out as tapped on the shoulders politely. Neither the slow tracks (‘2-39am December’) nor the energy rushes like ‘Song (song)’ are extreme enough in their objectives to provide the ebb and flow needed to make a dynamic album. With the added problem that none of the tracks have enough of a hook to hold itself outside the context of the album, you’re left with 13 songs all fighting with each other to be the broody ending to a Snow Patrol album. But given that all the songs are actually good enough to be used as the broody ending to a Snow Patrol album, at least their money’s not been wasted.