Paddy Casey: Living

By GRAHAM REID

(Herald rating: * *)

Irishman Casey - whose impressive Amen (So Be It) mixed hip-hop scratching and David Gray-styled folk demos - tells fibs. After that debut he told this writer he was recording again and we'd see an album soon. That was more than three years ago.

Maybe he was celebrating the acclaim he was afforded: Amen went top 20 and double-platinum in Ireland, and earned him nominations for best Irish songwriter and best male singer at the Hot Press awards. He got the Hot Press readers' award for best debut album. That was probably worth a few pints of Guinness between the constant touring which followed.

But he also said there would be more beats on his second album, and while that's true, it is the other musical embellishments to his essentially simple folk style which attract attention: strings and horns; vocoder - the thing Cher used on Believe - for the slinky sub-soul Don't Need Anyone; and swirling organ and techno drums on the early 80s new wave pop of Want It Can't Have It, which was doubtless what he wanted but strikes an oddly discordant note here. Worse, it's also not very good.

What these directions and ideas suggest is that Casey, as on his first album, won't be readily pinned down into David Gray territory. But the material ricochets off too many walls. And All In a Day goes the whole Bowie-guitar rock and lifts a line from Heroes.

Whether his voice is up to such rockism is another matter. Frankly, it's not.

With a delivery not dissimilar to Gray (a little tougher, however) and even a hint of early Van Morrison and Loudon Wainwright, Casey has been an appealing proposition, but it is limited - although it can be a thing of moving beauty, as on the ballad Anyone That's Yet to Come.

Simple, direct tracks such as Saints and Sinner, lifted to the clouds by an inflating string arrangement, work most effectively. But more than its share of trite lyrics and obvious rhymes (over/clover/over) drag this album down.

Evidence for the prosecution includes Bend Down Low: "When you're crying in the rain/no one else can feel your pain/ so who's going to take you by the hand/ try and make you understand."

I leave it to you to discover the adolescent rhyming horrors of Self Servin' Society.

Casey's follow-up has been a long time coming. Whether you think this lurching outing was worth the wait is another matter.

Label: Sony