Size 2 Shoes

Can people be too together, happy and balanced to make great music? I don’t think so. Still, every now and again, I review a record which is so peachy keen and emotionally healthy that I crave abusive heroin-addicted schizophrenics with battered four-track recorders and scar tissue. Size 2 Shoes are the hugely talented sibling duo Eoin and Moley O Suilleabhain, sons of the classical composer Micheál O Súilleabháin. And make no mistake, they really are hugely talented. Indeed their Crowded-House-as-sung-by-Paul-Heaton acoustic pop is extraordinarily well harmonised, played, arranged and recorded (with the help of producer Bill Whelan). In fact, as song titles like ‘Take It Easy’, ‘Respect The Man’ and ‘Sleep Tight’ indicate, it is so filled with cheerily optimistic good advice that I’m want to marry them off to relatives. But there is another side to life and there are moments when I feel that a touch of disharmony, of conflict is needed by way of contrast. Still, this is a very impressive, musically sophisticated debut.