Remember when Setanta was a London haven for literate, leftist and lauded Irish bands making guerrilla raids on HMV and the Virgin Megastore? Somewhere in the late ’90s it all went askew, but Pony Club may be the act to restore the label’s reputation, if not bank balance.
Mark Cullen’s second album, the follow up to the respectfully received Home Truths, further establishes him and his band as one of the sharpest tools in the indie shed.
Consider him The Thrills’ wicked and slightly embittered older brother. Or if you prefer, the sociopathic lurker on the perimeter of the singer-songwriter set. Family Business is a dozen poison pop cocktails spiked with substantial shots of vitriol. The arrangements, three-piece velvet suits woven from shoestring, are extremely easy on the ear, taking stolen notes from Bacharach, Bowie and Brian Wilson (and on ‘Spain Is Sunny’, master-jewellers like Air and the High Llamas), but the attitude evokes angry not-so-young upstarts like Jarvis, Elvis Costello and Ray Davies.
It’s an old trick but a good one – lush backdrops, juicy melodies, juicier counter-melodies, stacked female backing vocals and shiny brass bits masking unsavoury subject matters (see ‘One In A Million’). I think the word we’re looking for is entryism; the art of smuggling bottles of misanthropic pop into the chart party. Cullen makes a pretty mean psycho-geographer on tunes like ‘Dorset Street’ and ‘Buried In The Suburbs’, but the bulk of the album sees him operating as post-mortemist of fatally flawed relationships, tearing strips off dysfunctional exes on ‘Knees’ and ‘Miles Of Homes’ – or his own self on ‘Thinking Of You’ and ‘Deserve’.
Family Business is exactly the sort of record that gets the pundits all hot around the Y-fronts but rarely catches fire with the general public. Mark Cullen could settle for honorary scapegoat status alongside Luke Haines or Cathal Coughlan, but he really deserves to be the fly in the MTV 2 ointment.