It's A Long Way From This Sort Of Thing You Were Raised

Global warming is clearly having a discordant affect on the Irish psyche. How else can you explain an indigenous album of sunkissed harmonies, sugary West Coast pop, and dreamy bittersweet confections emerging as we’re about to head into the bleak midwinter? We should be thankful, as will all Seasonal Affective Disorder sufferers, that My Brother Woody’s sunny-vista serenade is here to bring a much needed ray of sunshine to the party.
Essentially the work of songwriter Mike Cleare – with help from an assorted coterie of musical mates – My Brother Woody’s debut might be out of season, by it's certainly not out of sync. Trading on influences like The Beach Boys and Teenage Fanclub, It’s A Long Way From This Sort Of Thing You Were Raised fizzes with classic pop sentiment, surfing on a wave of saccharine keys, breathy doo-wops, and mellifluous horns. The blissed-out mini-symphonies of ‘Not Exactly What You Dreamed Of’, ‘Your New Found Taste’ and ‘I Only Like Songs With Bops, Oohs And Aahs’ all shimmer with a heartwarming joie de vivre.
Lyrically Cleare has a playful ear and a cute everyman appeal. His dismay at developing “a belly he can’t hide” on the languid ‘Getting Old Goes With Getting Fat', will resonate with anyone sprouting a post-20s paunch; ‘I Got A Gurl’ boasts of landing a catch “who turns his bellybutton from an inny to an outy”. Such turns of phrase, coupled with Cleare’s sunbeam arrangements, will brighten anyone’s day.