Millionaire Crown

Many moons ago this reviewer was singing in a ‘Battle of the Bands’ type competition and was soundly thrashed by a poppy Dublin outfit called Brat, fronted by an intense, slight, dark music student called Andy Fitzpatrick. Mr Fitzpatrick has since relocated to New York City, and if I was hoping that this, his first solo release, was to be my opportunity to pay him back for that humiliating defeat, I’m disappointed.

Millionaire Clown is a collection of songs inspired by great movie themes, but in reality, each of the songs presented here could be described as a mini-movie; think Loudon Wainright, Berthold Brecht and Tom Waits. There’s almost a Beckett-like quality to the lyrics. On ‘Company’ he articulates a quiet, resigned loneliness, on ‘Making Ribbons’ he relates the story of a bored office drone who makes a hobby (fetish?) of fashioning ribbons from ladies stockings, and on the title track he pathetically outlines the life of a superclown. He also includes a re-working of his ’90s hit ‘Mercy Mercy’ when he fronted The DaDas.

The music is acoustic for the most part, sparse arrangements complementing Fitzpatrick’s laconic vocal, part Shane MacGowan, part Art Garfunkel, occasionally wilfully indulgent but always affecting.

Andy Fitzpatrick plays Whelan’s of Dublin on June 12th accompanied by The Harvest Ministers. I’ll be going along to hear more of this. And to buy him the deserved congratulatory pint I should have bought him years ago.