Mullingar’s Niall Breslin – better known by the laddish moniker ‘Bressie’ – is a man on a mission. His career to date comprises two albums with his former band The Blizzards and a well-received solo debut in Colourblind Stereo. But he has yet to have a serious hit beyond these shores, which is why the exposure he’s gained via RTE’s The Voice of Ireland is potentially so valuable. With 750,000 people tuning in every week, he may just be primed for a big hit here – and from there, who knows where the momentum might take him?

But does Rage & Romance deserve to be a hit? Despite Bressie’s obvious talent and flair for writing decent pop tunes, I was apprehensive that his second solo offering might be somewhat overcooked. Surprise, surprise: it only took a couple of tracks of Rage & Romance before I cautiously hit the buzzer and spun my chair around. This is his best record yet.
Co-written with Starsailor’s James Walsh, produced by Eliot James (responsible for the debuts of Two Door Cinema and Bloc Party), and recorded last year in London’s Eastcote Studios, these 12 songs are mostly FM gold, featuring an abundance of memorable melodies, catchy choruses and
punchy hooks.
The title track opens in admirably truculent style: “Let the games commence / Every cost is my expense…” Its first guitar-twanging 20 seconds sound like the intro to a rough-edged Beck song, but it’s not to be. The smooth vocal might even be auto-tuned though the press release announces that it’s “more organic and less processed and programmed”.
First single ‘Show Me Love’ follows and he nails it: a foot-stomping glam-rocker reminiscent of T-Rex, it has sass to burn. That Bressie is well aware of the potential shallowness of the rarefied space he inhabits as an Irish celebrity is obvious from ‘Her Every Flaw, Her Every Virtue’, an unrequited love song: “She don’t care much for five-star reviews / No penthouse suites, champagne or sea-views.”
Fans will be pleased that there’s not too much rage on display. Serious issues like depression are covered on tracks like ‘Silence Is Your Saviour’ and the excellent ‘Two’s A Crowd’. ‘Fight To Midnight’, meanwhile, is infectiously hummable. It isn’t all musically upbeat. The album closes softly and gloriously with ‘A Morning Without Words’ followed by the slow and mournful ballad ‘Dancing With The Dead’.
There’s nothing aggressively cutting edge here, but then that was never on the agenda. Instead, Rage & Romance is everything that an unashamedly commercial pop-rock record should be. Far superior to most of what’s out there at the moment, you can expect to hear lots of R&R on the radio this summer.