Everytime

EOIN WOODS: “Everytime” (Mac Caoilte Records)

IT’S ALMOST as if there’s an emigrant sound, a trademark, a caoineadh for the ’90s, if you will. Luka Bloom built the scaffolding and now the spaces look like they’re being filled by fellow emigrés equally driven, equally manic.

He’s opted for the lot of the troubadour and the job description fits him well. The voice is a hybrid of Freddie White’s bolshie bass and Joe Cocker’s pained precarious yelps teetering on the edge of hysteria.

Ten original pieces mark his territory out for perusal: loves lorn and worn are his stock-in-trade, bar two songs which target the lot of the outsider from the inside and the distance that inevitably comes between the blow-in and the native, no matter how intense the relationship.

‘More Than I’ is a mellow meditation on things past that owes more than its mood to the ’70s – the prostrate guitar lines wouldn’t be lost in a love-in at Donovan’s concerts, though the lyrics betoken a strength of character that mightn’t always have been par for the course.

‘The Image of Anna’ is a gentle haunting remembrance of the past too that metamorphoses into a mantric guitar coda with strong Indian influences, the kind of sound that George Harrison would’ve embraced hungrily a long time ago. As for the title track, ‘Everytime’ boasts a fancier guitar intro than most three-pieces would be hard pressed to match, and Woods gets by with just a little help from his friend, Martin Crotty.

All of which makes for much easy listening, probably the bane of every songwriter’s life. And so too Eoin Woods, I’d hazard, except that he works overtime to evade such labels by whipping and thrashing his guitar in a manner uncomfortably close to the bould Luka. ‘Islanders’ conjures memories of Riverside that are too fresh for comfort, its subject matter equally close to themes covered in Bloom’s ‘You Couldn’t Have Come At A Better Time’.

These are but minor reservations. Eoin Woods is marking his sound out for perusal and it’s a sound well worth perusing. Next time he might just stand out a tad more in the identity parade.

• Siobhán Long