You Look Cold left me hot under the collar, this debut album from 24 year-old, Irish Patrick Kelleher is awe-inspiring in it’s genre-bashing brilliance and refreshing take on a myriad of musical references. Swinging from Vincent Gallo’s most whispery nonchalance to thumping electro beats circa Talking Heads with David Byrne/ Ian Curtis shouty vocals (‘He Has to Sleep Sometime’) via an obvious interest early 90s hip-hop, perhaps A Tribe Called Quest most noticeably, no small feat for one man!
There is a vulnerable innocence to Kelleher’s music, it would be too easy to pigeon-hole him as a Sufjan Stevens/ early Patrick Wolf troubadour figure. He consistently avoids being fey or folky by a unique drum loops, his sheer vocal range and spooky sampling and unexpected rhythm pattern worthy of Animal Collective, this is particularly noticeable on the wonderful ‘Coat to Wear’ and ‘Finds You’ . ‘Multipass’ whilst a midpoint interval from the Avey Tare-esque bumps and bangs, stands out as a personal favourite, with it’s quiet electronic epicness.
This album whilst crammed with diverse reference points and orchestral density avoids convolution or verbosity by having the defined structure of a true masterpiece, with leitmotifs that re-occur, like the Casio keyboard or drum machine. Kelleher clearly has the talent, intelligence and sound knowledge of lo-fi production (most noticeably cassettes although this is never the focal piece of the sound production) to create something that is not in anyway derivative and totally unique to himself.
Kelleher deserves a lot of recognition for this intelligent, spookily erratic and starkly beautiful record.
‘You Look Cold’ by Patrick Kelleher is released on 13th July on Osaka Records
Tags:
Album Review, Electronica, Folk, Indie, Ireland, Lo-fi
