Album Review: I Have A Tribe Beneath A Yellow Moon

Aiming to embrace spontaneity and abandon the quest for a ‘perfect’ recording, I Have A Tribe’s debut album is an offering that overflows with bravery, invention and immediacy. The brainchild of Dubliner Patrick O’Laoghaire, Beneath A Yellow Moon was partly inspired by his two-year-old niece’s bashing of piano keys – and it has yielded a collection of songs that can be playful (‘Casablanca’), prickly (‘Kamala’) and downright powerful (‘La Neige’).
He sets his stall out strongly with ‘Passage,’ which is a weird and wonderful mix of tinkling ivories and xylophones, and is a little like a wonky ‘Stand By Me.’ The very fine ‘Buddy Holly’ is another memorable moment, borrowing bits of the bespectacled rocker’s ‘Raining In My Heart’ and remaking it in O’Laoghaire’s own image. ‘Battle Hardened Pacifist’ is perhaps the pick of the bunch though. A dynamic, stirring epic, it peaks when the big band kicks in to back up his beautiful, brittle voice, and is worth the price of admission alone.
Fans of Villagers, Anthony and the Johnsons et al should feel duty bound to check this out.
_Out Now

Rating: 7/10
Key track: 'Battle Hardened Pacifiist'