By GRAHAM REID
Without a trace of nostalgia we might observe, it used to be all so simple.
The music world was divided into rock, pop, jazz, dance, folk, classical ...
These days, however, the biggest category in record shops would probably be "uncategorisable."
Credit hip-hop for that, if you will. It certainly legitimised borrowing from all styles available to create something new.
Baby-faced Irishman Paddy Casey would probably have been a folksinger if he'd arrived 20 or so years ago.
But, being a child of his time, the acoustic-framed songs on his enormously impressive debut album, Amen: So Be It (Sony), come with DJ scratchings and drum loops, synth strings, pop consciousness, a smattering of funk and sometimes a white-knuckle rock attitude.
He also offers a touch of the white-soul groove on Downtown, a couple of finger-picking guitar folk ballads (Sweet Suburban Skies, Rainwater) and even the suggestion of an Irish whistle.
It's an addictive if unusual aggregation of sounds pulled together by his memorable songs.
"When I went into the studio," he said recently, "it wasn't even supposed to be an album. I was just sort of fantasising about all the different kinds of music I liked, and playing around with my songs in different styles."
That can backfire, of course, but Casey's melodies are simple and strong.
His sentiments are so purely expressed (Fear is an anxious projection about the future for his child), and the studio treatments so engaging that Amen becomes coherent despite the diversity.
Older folks whose tastes inhabited the margins of pop will hear a smattering of 70s cult-figure folk-rocker Rodriguez in Casey's delivery.
Others will see him in the tradition of Irish songwriters or even - as on the impressive Whatever Gets You True - a straight-ahead pop-rock singer in the manner of mid-60s Dylan.
Or a pure folkie, depending on what comes up first when you hit the random play button.
It is an exceptional, uncategorisable, album.
David Gray is the Manchester-born singer-songwriter whom Joan Baez called "the greatest lyricist since Bob Dylan." (Is Bob dead, Joanie?)
Interesting connections with Casey, too: the Dylan thing, their acclaim in Ireland, they effortlessly cross from acoustic to electric ... Gray has also picked up plaudits from the Chemical Brothers and Bono, Robbie Williams and Radiohead.
A remix of Please Forgive Me, which opens on his White Ladder (Iht/Warners), is big in Ibiza clubs, apparently.
White Ladder, his first outing on his own label after a couple of unhappy major-label skirmishes, finds the man - and co-writer/multi-instrumentalist Clune - effortlessly blending electronica and electric guitar sensibilities with acoustic guitar and piano. That remix was almost obvious: his own version of Please Forgive Me rides a rapid-fire synth-drum pattern beneath his Dylan-gets-emotional vocals.
There are moments when you think: in a better world Mick Hucknall would have passed this way. And as with Casey, Gray has a strong melodic sensibility and a way with a lyric.
You can also hear why Baez likes him as he drags the vowels and weighs each word.
There's also a strong Van Morrison connection in the way he stretches lines and spins out from an acoustic-jazz pop framework.
In an especially neat inversion he takes the old ballad by electro-poppers Soft Cell, Say Hello Wave Goodbye, and redoes it as an Astral Weeks-styled, string-softened slice of jazz-folk which ends with him unselfconsciously quoting from Van's Into the Mystic and Madam George.
Just as he makes techno-pop out of the acoustic ballad Please Forgive Me, he makes a melancholy, spiritual song out of Soft Cell.
The Irish, who often show impeccable taste when it comes to slightly angular singer-songwriters like Casey and Gray, pushed White Ladder to the top of their charts for five weeks.
It's a slow grower which has been re-released internationally because it was passed over first time out.
It was a year after its release that it peaked in Ireland, and that came after he had some high-profile support slots on the bills with Robbie Williams and Stereophonics.
Both White Ladder and Amen have the feel of albums which have considerable longevity.
So, two fine, "uncategorisable" albums.
Casey, Gray. Now that shouldn't be too hard to remember.
<i>Elsewhere:</i> Irish acclaim will spread, to be sure
AdvertisementAdvertise with NZME.