Make no bones about it, Box Heart Man is a cracking American rock album – not rock in the spiky haired punk or earnest grunge sense but the classic school of thinking, imbued with a sense of the nation’s musical history. Listen to the freewheeling scope of numbers such as ‘Build’, ‘Hope’ and ‘Jane’ and you instantly find yourself harking back to the glory days of the Long Ryders, Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers and Lone Justice, rock with a sense of country and folk and a feeling of real spirit.
Bit of a shocker then to find out that Dignam hails from northside Dublin and is a veteran of the Glen/Mic/Kila/Paddy busking axis. So how come then he doesn’t make the now standard Irish singer songwriter kind of record, dripping with acoustic earnestness and sensitivity? A resident of Pittsburgh for the past few years, the answer would seem to be that he has soaked up more than a little of his adopted home’s strident approach to music. Box Heart Man is an exhilarating listen, bustling with positivity and a way of seeing the best in life – something to do maybe with the imminent birth of his first child. The music backs this approach perfectly, a beautifully controlled racket of classic instrumentation and note perfect playing.
It’s all rather out of step with current trends and the more refreshing for it. This may be an identity that Dignam has chosen to adopt rather than been born with, but no one could argue that it doesn’t suit him very well indeed.