It warms the heart when you hear music that wasn’t made with the intention, however covert, of giving their members fame and fortune. And with their debut, the seven – count em, seven – that are in Dublin’s 8Ball have demonstrated they make music because they love to. Because it’s in their blood. Damn lucky for them that they happen to be good at it too.
Combining the head-nodding influence of The Thrills (‘Dudley Street’) with the musicianship and chilled atmospherics of Turin Brakes (‘Strange Boy’), the album is full of dulcet vocals, acoustic guitar and piano. But it’s also a journey that occasionally encounters electronica or extra-terrestrial samples – and is that a bit of reggae in ‘If U Must’? The end result is a glorious insight into music as an artform – but without the pretension of those with less talent to display.
But to be clear: this isn’t background music you play when your friends come over or when you stick the CD into your computer at work and pop them headphones in. Far too intricate for that. While current single ‘Bird’ comes the closest, there’s no big song or change of pace to stop it fading into the background after the opener – and if there’s a challenge for their second long player, that’s probably it. While it’s clear they wouldn’t force it, should they land themselves with a clear emotion to convey with a steel-strong melody, the Irish music scene will have found itself forcibly moved on a generation.