Galway brothers Daniel, Shane and Óisín Cluskey have been impressing everyone who saw them at festivals throughout the summer with their refreshing take on guitar-based pop and stunning vocal harmonies. Their much anticipated debut, produced by hip hop maestro Ali Shaheed Muhammad (A Tribe Called Quest), more than lives up to their live reputation and should be good enough to win them a mainstream audience.
Here’s the deal. The Kanyu Tree blend shiny, ‘80s influenced pop (think China Crises, Fiction Factory, Aztec Camera, Altered Images) with a little bit of Orange Juice. However, this is no mere exercise in retro styling. The band wear their influences subtly and this debut is as confident and assured a collection of songs as you’re likely to hear.
‘Radio’, the catchy single released earlier this year, will be familiar to many and it’s not untypical of the album as a whole. That said, listening to the first few notes of the opening track, ‘A Lot Like Me’, you might be forgiven for thinking you’d stumbled across a long lost Go Betweens tune. But then the falsetto vocals and effervescent harmonies of The Cluskey Brothers enter the picture and it’s soon clear that this is something else entirely
The tunes are superbly melodic. What’s more, virtually every track is a potential radio-friendly single. The gloriously soulful ‘Can’t Get Through’ has echoes of late period Undertones (‘The Love Parade’). The title track, meanwhile, veers towards the classic Hall & Oates sound of the ‘80s while the mellower ‘Stay’ (the new single) showcases a more restrained side. Elsewhere, there’s an irresistible power pop feel to ‘Shelf Life’, while the upbeat ‘Congratulations’ boasts a terrific vocal arrangement. This is a highly mpressive debut from one of Ireland’s new breed of hopefuls.