Big Storm Comin'

THE APPARENT cultural contradiction of a Norwegian country music singer dueting with an American singer/songwriter (who's based in Ireland!) is soon forgotten after a few spins of this album, which stylistically sounds like anything that might have come out of Nashville recently.

Tom Pacheco, a regular on the Dublin country scene for the past few years writes the songs and Albrigtsen contributes vocals to about half of them. This is probably a wise move. What Pacheco's hoarse, gritty singing style lacks in colour, Albrigtsen - a star in his native land - supplies and his forcefully dynamic voice is utilised to the full on this album.

Recorded in Oslo using Norwegian session players, the production is impressively slick and the arrangements sympathetic. While Pacheco's politically charged observations are often admirable, his lyrics are doom-laden to the point of utter despair. The result is an album which is fundamentally, unremittingly bleak.

The title track, 'Big Storm Comin'' anticipates an imminent ecological and environmental catastrophe: "Poisons in the land and sky, poisons in the sea/Soon there'll be no place to hide when the leaves fall from the tree." 'Bury My Soul In The Sky' laments the fate of the disappearing Native Americans and 'Full Time Job' is a helpless plea for employment from a redundant steel worker.

In a spoken word introduction to 'The Deer', Pacheco relates how he couldn't bring himself to eat his meal, such was his disgust at seeing a deer's head hanging on the restaurant wall: "Where little children stare at him up from dinner plates/The real world staring in their face/Could this be Bambi's fate?"

Even the love songs on the album - 'We're Strangers Now', 'The Bottom Of My Heart', and 'Grand Canyon' - offer little hope to the protagonists.

Only the evident quality of the musicianship counterbalances the prevailing gloom. Next time out, an injection of humour or even downright hedonistic indulgence might be in order.

In the meantime, I think I'll need a pair of rose-tinted glasses to get me through the next few days!

• Colm O'Hare