Album Reviews |

Jay Donnellan

This Island Earth 6½
One More Day / To The Hopeless Romantic / I Will Walk / Half Way To You / People Get Ready / A Promise / Wooden Ship Glass Bottle / Bullet-Proof / This Island Earth / Enough Is Enough / Surprise Surprise / You said / No Better Than This

We don't start off too well. The opening song is by far one of the worst here, more in terms of sound than anything else, I blame the keyboards that root this to the Eighties, hardly a good sound to be rooted to. Still, a word of explanation first. James Donnellan may be better known to Love fans in particular, as Jay Donnellan, he played guitar for them on 'Four Sail' and half of the album that followed. I was rather taken with his guitar playing on 'Four Sail', and he contacted me via e-mail thanking me for my words during that review. Some time later, I received this album through the post. I think that the first song put me off for a good while - I really don't like it, it's very anonymous and doesn't feature any noticeable guitar, although guitar is there. The voice of James Donnellan is fairly decent, by the way. Nothing super exciting, but fairly decent and strong, all the same. You see, after the opening song, we get ourselves a genuinely good song, dylan influenced - the weighty 'To The Hopeless Romantic' - decent lyrics, etc, etc - and something of an event. As the album progresses, good guitar and mostly mid-tempo songs, but good singer-songwriter songs, serious heartfelt songs, the cumulative effect of all the songs does impress. I dig 'I Will Walk' where instead of Dylan, we get Neil Young as a vocal influence. 'Half Way To You', like many of the songs here, is kind of relaxed, but it's classy and it's nice listening.

I don't know - when so many albums are recorded these days seemingly purely as a career move, and not out of any love - it's nice to have an album that comes across so genuinely. It's a world removed from the music he recorded with Love, by the way. Love fans won't necessarily dig this - although it's so nice and peaceful - yet searching through the lyrics. Well, maybe not searching - but there are far worse things than to sound like than as if you think about life. Thinking is good. 'A Promise' opens with folky guitar, 'Wooden Ship Glass Bottle' opens with bluesy guitar - never a note out of place. The vocals are lyrics aren't the best EVER - but then, whose lyrics are? Well, insert name of your own favourite band here, I suppose. Well, anyway - what I was trying to say was 'Wooden Ship Glass Bottle' has lovely guitar and mellow vocals and it's a nice thing, relaxing but not so relaxing it doesn't mean anything - it's high quality and so is the album.

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