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In a world choc a block with male singer songwriters Matt Finucane enters. He sits down and starts to play and you realise very suddenly that this guy is not what you assumed he would be (a shiny toothless bore). His music speaks in a way that few other modern male singer songwriters could (read would) ever emulate.
Thar be no pop here. No, in its place are fascinating little musical insights into the loves and thoughts of a young man with a taste for all things peculiar. You wont find any awful love songs on Episodes instead you songs about Kafka, phantom parties and Black Membranes fill your ears. Each composition is inspired and unsettling. His refusal to embrace standard conventions on song writing will have you scratching your head at points but give him a few listens and he'll be in your head for months.
When you hear Matt Finucane inevitably you think of Lou Reed. They both share a sense of the absurd and ability to relate a good story through music. Matt's fantastic 11 minute short story about a little walk with dire consequences is the most innovative thing that's passed my ears in a while. The fact that it has a soundtrack of feedback and seemingly random bursts of strumming only serves to heighten the sense of trepidation you have as to the conclusion of the story.
If you waste your money on every X- Factor release and don't see the point of music if it doesn't go verse chorus verse, you really aren't going to understand ole Matty boy. If however you can open your mind to new things and different takes on song writing then please, immerse yourself. You won't be disappointed...
4/5 stars - Ollie Cornish, www.music-news.com (Jan '09)
Live review, 11 Nov:
"...First up was Matt Finucane, former frontman of cult indie band Empty Vessels who, of our two acts, might have initially seemed to fit the traditional singer-songwriter mould. But that is exactly what he is challenging with his solo material, pushing that idea of one-man and his guitar to its limits. With a noticeable Lou Reed influence, his songs move between gentle laments to attacks on his guitar that teeter on a knife-edge, with song structures more akin of rock, or even jazz, and lyrics that cover everything from fairytales to literary icons. Matt pulls all this of with a suave cool and a voice that echos Jeff Buckley and Nick Cave. His debut EP, 'Episodes', is out now on Light Crude Records."
www.cmumusicnetwork.co.uk/daily/index.html
EP Review:
Matt Finucane – Episodes EP
With a label photo making Matt look like the Third Man it's obvious his work will inhabit the shadows. Opener Kafka Song offers a monograph of the author, and the choice of the story teller whose characters exist in dark corners is fitting. The character is well served by the delivery, Brechtian swing, fitting for smoky cellar bars ripe for secret police raids. Before the door is kicked in, though, Matt will croon over his acoustic guitar in honour of the writer that launched a million great coats. In fact it's easy to imagine Matt staying in the cellar, bottle of red wine uncorked, entertaining the bookish music fans with bleak vingettes. What Comes Next is almost Beat poet free form, it bleeds into No Sexwar Please which is more sturdy – like Edwin Collins . Black Membrane is the best manifestation of the shadows, still something of Edwin but with a more unsettling feedback drone covering everything like the membrane of paranoid depression. A drum beat at the ends promises a cathartic explosion that doesn't appear. Matt does however offer at least musical relief on Phantom Party, a lighter croon, though perhaps it's like the relief experienced by characters in those portmanteau horror films. The dream they recount in which they die horribly was – phew – just a dream. Until, as the last characters story plays out, it transpires of them (all of us in the cellar) are dead anyway.
www.myspace.com/indiedad (Parental Advisory blog 17:08)