Joe Firstman: The War of Women

By REBECCA BARRY

(Herald rating: * * * *)


American singer-songwriter Joe Firstman claims to have so many notches on his bedpost that he gives new meaning to the term "easy listening". Story goes, he wrote this album after leaving a girlfriend in North Carolina to move to LA - and it doesn't take much to figure out he found his feet again pretty quickly.

But this southern boy is quite the charmer for his 24 years. You can just see him at the piano, passionately stroking the keys as he sings about purchasing porn, upsetting a preacher and learning dance routines "from dirty magazines".

Fortunately, he's also a credible songwriter, and, like his contemporaries Ryan Adams and Ed Harcourt, he fuses the old-fashioned conventions of Americana with a maturity beyond his years. Now You're Gorgeous, Now You're Gone is the perfect head-in-the-whisky-bottle tale of regret, Breaking All the Ground and Slave or Siren are gritty, powerhouse hits and After Los Angeles is one of the album's many tender country ballads.

He delivers them with good humour, too, giddily running whole sentences into half a breath - "I'll open up your car door every time, long-as-you-can-reach-over-and-unlock-mine"- and talks more of his mistakes than his conquests.

At first listen it would be tempting to lump this into the same basket as the Goo Goo Dolls or Counting Crows, and it doesn't help that the cover looks like Carl Doy entertaining a psychiatric ward.

Yet, unlike his MOR peers, Firstman's music is brimming with personality. It's a wonder he didn't leave his phone number in the liner notes.

Label: Warner