Customer Reviews

Back To The Centre

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This has a crisp jaunty feel to it with nice production. My favourite Brady album, it sits nicely between his earlier, slightly less approachable efforts and his later, blander (ie. mainstream) albums. Deep in Your Heart is one of the stand out songs with Eric Clapton on electric guitar. Paul Brady's voice is strong and unique and he has an interesting turn of phrase. Once described as 1987's "most attractive" album.

Paul Brady's wonderfully energetic song 'Walk the White Line' was a big hit in Ireland twenty years ago (was used in at least one TV ad), and when I was a kid I used to love hearing it on the radio. Twenty years later I got around to buying this album (just this week) and it's a great reminder of just how talented Brady is. Although now and again there is the distracting twang of an instrument which gives away the decade the album was recorded in, this is real quality. When I say that I've always thought of Brady as being the closest Ireland has to a Billy Joel, I mean the Billy Joel of "Piano Man" and "Goodnight Saigon". Best songs:

"Walk the White Line" - fast-paced, lively; evoking late nights and longing.

"Soulbeat" - a wonderfully beaty tune.

"The Island" - an anti-war song that mentions Lebanon (the invasion took place a few years before the album's release) and alludes to the Troubles in Brady's native Northern Ireland.

"The Homes of Donegal" - easily the most evocative song on the album. Like The Waterboy's arrangement of Yeats's poem "The Stolen Child", this too sets the verse of an Irishman (Sean McBride) to music. The effect is one of pastoral splendour.