Life, death and this review ending with some terrible beer pun (my money’s on ‘An Ale Of Two Cities’): some things are just plain inevitable. And so it is written in the stars (or at the very least, scratched into a tree somewhere in a South Dublin schoolyard) that the contents of Closer To You will shortly be ubiquitous – on every wireless, fellow bus user’s iPod and/or RTÉ GAA advert, coming to a screen near you, very soon.
Well, relax, this will be no hardship – because Closer To You is indeed rather good.
Three albums in and, such has been the scale of their success to date, The Coronas could probably release a spoken word mariachi record and it’d still find a place on Today FM’s top 40. It’s a great position to be in. Thus emboldened, rather than sticking to the tried and trusted, on Closer To You, Messrs O’Reilly, Egan, Knox and McPhillips have set sail into previously unchartered waters, making what is clearly their most energetic and upbeat album yet. This is very good news for those of us who struggled to make up our minds about the band in the past (for example, I couldn’t get enthused about their chart-topping debut Heroes Or Ghosts, but Tony Was An Ex-Con standout track ‘Far From Here’ mysteriously ended up on my iTunes ‘most played’ list): we will now be able to make our judgement based on these 11 individual tracks.
First single ‘Addicted To Progress’ may or may not borrow a riff from Two Door Cinema Club – give it a close listen! – but it is a blistering track nonetheless. In contrast, ‘My God’ – on which more later – is a folksy acoustic hymn. ‘Make It Happen’ kicks off with a whopping great glam rock intro, and sinister opener ‘What You Think You Know’ is roots rock through and through. While, in the past, the band’s ballads have erred on the side of schmaltz, they’ve really got it right with ‘Different Ending’, a charming, earnest number that builds to a thrilling, rocked-up, epic finish.
Lead singer Danny O’Reilly’s vocals can be mannered, but they can also be very lovely, like on the dreamy ‘Mark My Words’. There are a few lyrically questionable moments: it’s hard to know for sure if Danny is being ironic in ‘My God’, which includes lines like: “My God will keep me warm and my God will fight my war”; meanwhile, for me, the heartsick emotion of ‘Write To Me’ is diminished by throwaway lyrics like, “Yeah, I’m a weirdo, but at least I’m your weirdo.” Still, even the lesser tracks sound immaculate, thanks to producer Tony Hoffer (Beck, Supergrass, The Kooks) who has given the whole thing a sonic boom.
Closer To You is vibrant, accomplished, and – something I hadn’t expected – ambitious. And it confirms, once and for all: The Coronas have bottle...