Produced by a fellow piano balladeer Conway Savage, Dundalkian Mark Corcoran’s second album is a battered but beloved suitcase of songs that when opened exhales the whiff of empty fairgrounds, wood-stained saloons and rain-slicked boulevards. Suffused with an old school Bogartian a-cynic-is-just-a-disappointed-romantic sensibility for sure, but mordantly witty with it. Corcoran’s got a voice as strong and sure as a board floor, firm grounding for tunes as shaken and stirred as ‘Fairground Magic’, ‘And You Know’ and ‘It Starts With A Bad Joke’ (“…and it ends with your hands wrapped around my throat”), all framed by Sheila Sullivan’s gorgeously woebegone C&W violin. Writer and producer referenced Tim Hardin, and it shows. If Wim Wenders ever chose to reshoot Paris Texas in the Irish borderlands he might want to consider ‘The Pattern Reversed’ as soundtrack material. And whaddya know: there’s even a pure pop tune in the form of ‘(I Don’t Wanna Be) So Polite’ – a hit if I ever heard one.

This stuff’s fine as old wine.

KEY TRACK: ‘It Starts With A Bad Joke’