The Pale - 21 Song Salute

Way back in the early ‘90s, Dublin trio The Pale were one of the great white hopes of Irish indie pop. Widely acclaimed, their first two albums went Top 10, and quirky singles such as ‘Butterfly’ and ‘Dogs With No Tails’ were seldom off the airwaves. Although they seemed to suddenly disappear off the face of the earth circa 1993, they’ve never actually stopped working.
Always somehow out of kilter with the mainstream music industry, they were off being big in places like Turkey and Japan for a while. They toured as an electronica outfit under the name Produkt for a number of years. During one brief but presumably colourful period, they were the house band for an alternative circus. Throughout the last two decades, operating without a major record deal, they’ve been releasing an (un)steady stream of limited-edition albums and fan club exclusives.
Featuring previously unreleased and often unheard material from sessions for six of their ten albums, 21 Song Salute features a track for – as opposed to from – every year of their career to date. “These songs are the strays, stragglers and forgotten sidekicks,” explains lead singer Matthew Devereux. “To qualify for inclusion, they had to be unreleased, underexploited or unused.”
Previewing candidate songs every Monday over a six-month period, the group engaged with their Facebook and Soundcloud followers to get feedback on which tracks to include.
So essentially what we have here is the sound of a band cleaning out their studio closet. Predictably, it’s a hit and miss affair. Covering a wide range of styles, from pop to rock to ambient to electronica, there’s some absolutely wonderful material here (‘Lady Gregory’, ‘Sleeping Pattern’, ‘Small Town’) and also a couple of tracks that sound sketchy and unfinished (‘Red Letter Day’ is a pleasant mandolin jam, but that’s all). In many ways, though, this adds to the overall charm and oddity of the collection.
Whatever the musical backgrounds, Devereaux’s lyrics always shine through. On the brilliant ‘Bullets’, he sings, “We break up every morning/Put it back together every day/I’m sorry for my bitching and my moaning/I was made this way.” ‘Tiny Pictures’ continues the bad relationship theme: “I know you will fuck me over in the end/Until you do, I’ll stand by you like my only friend.”
For the most part, it gels. With some judicious editing and deleting, there’s possibly a shorter, sharper and stronger album here, but that was never the point of the exercise. So salute youse, sirs!

Key Track: 'The Kid'