Revelino
(47/100 Greatest Irish Albums)

It may have been the much-missed cultural glue of Dineen-period No Disco that made ‘Happiness Is Mine’ a hit for Revelino, but it was Brendan Tallon’s startling songwriting that held Revelino together. Emerging almost from nowhere— no disrespect intended to their previous incarnation, The Coletranes— Revelino gave, on their 1994 debut, a masterclass in assimilating influences and stamping your personality on them. So you knew, listening to ‘My Bones’, ‘Happiness Is Mine’ and ‘Taking Turns’ that someone in the band might have had Surfer Rosa or Life’s Rich Pageant snuck away somewhere, but you also knew that Tallon had the skill to lift adroitly from the music he loved so as to create a muscular, compelling noise all of Revelino’s own; sometimes ragged and visceral, most usually utterly disarming. ‘Don’t Lead Me Down’ is heart-on-sleeve stuff of the highest order, and if they never bettered this, well few did.