The relative ease with which music can be recorded these days means that the market is flooded with lots of bad DIY records. However, there’s also a more positive related phenomenon: quality artists can continue recording beyond a point when it would formerly have become economically unfeasible.
This partially explains the new level of musical maturity and excellence apparent in some Irish independent releases. It means the likes of Goodtime (formerly Goodtime John and even more formerly John Cowhie of Dead Man’s Flats and 46 Long) get to keep going until they become very good indeed.
This record is a case in point. An easy-listening, gentle and propulsive guitar-pop masterpiece, it sounds like ‘80s pop filtered through ‘90s bedsit indie music, and it doesn’t have a song, note or idea out of place. It’s all lovely, clean, electric guitars (clipped, arpeggiated and counter-melodic), well-placed basslines, perfectly positioned drum-beats, rhythm guitars that actually have a proper rhythmic purpose (lots of rhythm guitar exists to give singers something to do with their hands), melancholy falling melodies and charmingly faltering pop backing vocals. It generally feels like the sun bursting through the windows of a formerly darkened bedsit.
It’s also to Goodtime’s credit that I can’t tell if this record is the hard-won product of re-writes, graft and production or simply an easy result of a particularly creative afternoon. One way or another, it’s lovely.