Losers And Sinners

Have guitar, will travel. That seems to be the raison d'jtre of Sean O'Neill. This is double barrel troubadour music complete with greatcoat and dusty vocals - and a skewed perspective that tilts at a delightfully obtuse angle with the world.

O'Neill's debut is a self-financed, self-penned, self-produced collection of wry observations, quirky vignettes and downright anarchic commentaries. With 17 songs crammed together, inevitably some tend to meld into one another. Some OD on bedsit angst ('Inshallah') while others are slight ideas that should never had seen the light of day (to wit, 'Dreams (revealing?) Poem' - as execrable an attempt at poetic expression as anything you'd find in a writer's workshop).

But amid the rubble a few real gems raise their craggy heads above the parapet and all is forgiven. 'Apathetic Blues' and 'I Can't Hear You' are models of self-restraint and condensed emotion, capturing the vacuum-packed reality of some relationships perfectly.

Truth be told, Losers And Sinners is a demo album: an interesting snapshot of O'Neill's potential as a writer, it just might get him the record deal he deserves.