Gimme That Sound

Think is basically Dubliner Terry McGuinness, armed with a whole bunch of instruments and ideas. Sure, he ropes in Jerry Fish for backing vocals on a couple of tracks and sticksman supreme Binzer Brennan crops up over the course of the album, but to all intents and purposes, Gimme That Sound is a Terry McGuinness album in all but name.

Reared on a diet of classic rock ‘n’ roll, from Bowie to The Beatles, Jagger to Jimmy Paige, McGuinness has created a soaring sound with its roots in the past but its future directed towards the stars.

They’re simple songs at heart, but there’s serious spaced-out shenanigans going on in the background, especially on the sonic shuffle of ‘Home’, the glamtastically great ‘Robot Number 1’ (even if he can’t pronounce ‘mannequin’) or the insanely infectious recent single, ‘Man Alive’.

McGuinness’ vocals are pitched somewhere between Bowie and Neil Young, and the lyrics can sometimes veer towards the hippy-dippyish we’re-all-members-of-the-human-race kind of genre. However, even at its sweetest, the tunes are generally infused with an inherent catchiness that almost dares your toe not to tap along in time, from the Spanish guitar interlude of ‘Dream On’ to the frazzled and fried ‘Hello’, the naggingly insistent ‘Turn It On’ to the swirling title track.

The brilliant and witty ‘Ballad Of An Unemployed Musician’ comes as a welcome change of pace, an ultra-ironic easy listening affair, courtesy of Carl O’Brien’s trumpet. That said, ‘When You Smile’ is a little Lennon-lite for my tastes, and ‘Set Me Free’, while a decent song, is remarkably like The Soup Dragons (until Jerry Fish’s baritone at the end).

Gimme That Sound is generally very good, and sometimes great but it occasionally suffers under the weight of its influences. Ultimately, it’s unashamedly retro, wilfully upbeat and, frankly, impossible to dislike.