Search - Cathal Coughlan :: Foburg

Psychic Dystopia's for All

The Aging Forehead | London United Kingdom | 08/30/2007

(5 out of 5 stars)

"Essentially a concept album with a story to tell - it immediately takes you to a very dark place - kicking off with a song about the main character, a petrol-fume addicted man that burns his family to death, and fittingly, this general note of loss and depravity continues throughout the album. Now a word of reassurance - in anyone elses hands this would have been just plain depressing. In Coughlans hands, amid his assured,frankly peerless vocabulary and deeply sardonic sense of humour, it becomes irresistably compelling. This in itself deserves your attention. What really makes this album work so well, however, is in the way his vision is communicated through extraodinarily affecting melodies and moods. These really are strong, powerful songs - 'Epiphany Season', 'The Sacrament of Killing' and 'Big Wax Hand', for example, are all stunning - and 'Rat Poison Rendezvous' cheers me up every time.



The backing sextet ostensibly provides a generally tight, elegant, pleasant and disarmingly cabaret-esque band sound, which occasionally mutates into something much less friendly. You can't dance to it, or get stoned to it, or even put it on as background music. There are no rousing anthemic choruses, no blazingly sonic intros, nothing to bang your head to, and no virtuoso soloing on any instrument. However, what you do get is another unique trip through the mind of one of our most brilliant songwriters that will - if you possess an ounce of intellectual and emotional sensitivity - make the hairs on your neck stand on end. A real labour of love that is genuinely subversive, relentlessly uncompromising, and utterly unique. Coughlans finest work by far. Never has the utter hopelessness of psychic dystopia sounded so good.



Give this man a bigger - much bigger audience."