Swoony dream pop to waft you into a sense of reverie, from the Armagh troubadour, Conchùr White.

Release Date: 19th January 2024

Label: Bella Union

Format: CD / Vinyl / Digital

It’s good to kick off the year with some new, with White being both a name new and a voice unheard previously, at least to me. Pronounced Conor, this young fella has managed to convince Bella Union he is worth a punt, in itself no small accolade, the label’s reputation seldom sullied by the mainstream or by the middle of the road. It seems he has form, with a brace of well-received EPs, ‘Bikini Crops’ and ‘Dreamers’, following a vocational period in NI indie band, Silences, all catching the ears of both musicians and radio. Steve Lamacq has been a champion and getting to tour alongside the likes of Villagers, John Grant and, most recently, John Cale, can’t have helped but widen his exposure. Time, then, to investigate……….

Opener, The Holy Death, is a cracker, a mix of finger picked guitar and excitably wispy vocals. As the rhythm section kicks in, I’m getting fumes of Graham Nash, and as tubular bells accompany the chorus, I’m in! Seriously, it is a blast of well hewn hooks, with snippets of studio trickery to keep it modern, alongside the pianos and twangy lead. The momentum keeps up for Righteous (Why Did I Feel That), his voice now a falsetto of hope infused uncertainty. The drums a step ahead the the vocals, that keeps the song propulsively going forward, with a slipstream of appeal. Pure pop. I’m wondering if White was an altar boy in his youth, but I digress. 501s, I assume, can only be a paean to trousers, not the commonest of lyrical concern, David Dundas apart. And, indeed it is, a memory of when he was a “kid with a plastic gun“, being entranced by the jeans wearing apparition in front of him. Another attractive song, the words need some concentration to catch, but the melody buoys it along just fine.

Rivers starts as a Donovan-esque whimsy, from when the Don was more than a figure of mirth. Again the multi-tracked vocals give a sense of glimmering haze about it all, and all feels dreamy and soft focus: “You wished it all away, you wished it all away when youe were younger’. Picked guitar is becoming the template these songs seem most struck from, and I Did Good Today is no different, with, once more, the near motorik percussion giving it a boost. Plus, it has some harp in there, an automatic clincher for me, as the bells in the first track. A more gentle middle eight allows the distinction to become that more pronounced, which is a nice touch. The title track then ups the ante, with, this time, a chiming piano to offset the ever more fragile vocal attack, a crystalline feather that infiltrates rather than assaults. Another delicate and thoughtful song with a lingering reverie that repeats and returns, long after the song has ended.

Red House Parlour is back to the guitar, with a slight nagging worry that these songs might be all beginning to blur into one another. It takes, then, Before Ten to show rather more personality, the refrain becoming a bit of an earworm, as the instrumentation builds up behind it. The mood is that folk-pop interface that is harder to capture than many assume, most failing. I have also heard the S word uttered in connection with White, or ES to mention the full initials of the comparison; I think it a little unfair and not a little lazy, but I guess the cross that many a modern day solo troubadour must bear. And his production team may well be in no hurry to banish that. Fawn actually does, with a more muscular bent to it, if only slightly so, with piano, drums and muted electronica.

Women In The War is just bonkers, I think, in a good way, a warped 60s style ballad, in a pre-merseybeat fashion. Think early Richard Hawley sung by a naughty choirboy. The conga tapping rhythm at the beginning adds to the oddness. And, frankly, anything that has you wondering whether it is brilliant or whether it is terrible, well, it is probably the former. I just wish I hadn’t briefly been reminded of Sugar Baby Love (by the Rubettes)……… Final track is back to the feel of a confessional, with muffled mumbling, as it opens, perhaps lifted from just that. An airy ballad, it ends the album up near up to the standard of the opening salvo. The orchestration is sensitive and adds an ethereality that has you floating away from your still body. Sorry if that sounds a bit creepy, with the added sounds and atmospherics only enhancing that “journey’s end” vibe. (Add oo-ee-oo and Close Encounters music.)

I actually want to like this record just a little bit more than I do. It is toploaded for sure, the first few tracks are really quite something, if then drifting a little bit into the safety of sameness. Yes, it does lift, if unexpectedly at one point, towards the end. White can certainly carry a tune, and can pen one too. I think it is now down to tighter production and greater studio discipline to really show his worth. The ideas are certainly sound. His words: “There’s ghosts, there’s other worlds, there’s a cosmic feeling, questions about the beginning and the end and dreams“. So, with those pointers in mind, overall, yes, he did ‘Did Good Today.’

Talking of,:

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