Conor Coughlan
Album: Give It Up
Label: Homewood Music Collective
Tracks: 11
Website: http://conorcoughlanmusic.com

Born in Essex, moving to Joni Mitchell's hometown of Saskatoon when he was 12 and raised on a diet of Neil Young, The Rolling Stones and Bruce Springsteen, Coughlan starting writing songs when he was nine and formed his first band at 14. Five years later, he's making his album debut, recorded at the legendary Fantasy Studios in California and backed by the likes of Tracy Chapman rhythm section Dawn Richardson and Paul Olguin with Julie Wolf's Hammond regularly to the fore.

Characterised by a trebly catch in the throat warble, with a distinct Irish flavour often in evidence, his influences are upfront, Dylan and Van Morrison hanging out together on Irish Serenade, but they never cloud his own sound and soul. Lyrically, the songs tend to lean to the darker side (despite its jangly melody, the opening track is called 'Sun Don't Shine'), whether that's to do with broken relationships, lovers and friends, as on the brooding 'Dannemora Banks' ("all I got left is a tear stained picture of me and you") and the David Gray-ish title track ("Man I know you won't come round here anymore"), while, driven by strummed acoustic guitar 'Fisherman's Line' (which likely nods to Jake Bugg) would appear to be a murder ballad ("I buried her 'neath the sand and I smoked my last cigarette"), if only in the narrator's mind.

Introduced by a dusty harmonica, while not the profoundest lyric in the world, with its catchy, repeated line chorus, 'Fifth Avenue Flirt' is one of the album's several highlights, conjuring a Springsteenesque blue-collar romanticism; indeed, the location and mention of a character called Sherry could well place this around Asbury Park.

As on 'For You' and 'Will You Be Mine?', he tends to keep things instrumentation and arrangements fairly simple, but you get the sense that, backed by a full band, Coughlan has the confidence and capacity to deliver a full blooded live performance too. This debut is an impressive calling card and his is a career trajectory I'll be following closely.

Mike Davies