Pony Club - Family Business
[Setanta]

Dublin based multi-instrumentalist and songwriter Mark Cullen was tipped to be the next big thing more than once. Yet as figurehead in post-Britpop bands Bawl and later Fixed Stars, fame & fortune never came knocking.

It's hard to see why, as these songs possessed just as much sunshine & feel-good energy as the likes of the Boo Radleys and Dodgy at their commercial peak. Mark refuses to give up the ghost and returns with his 2nd album of bittersweet pop songs under his new Pony Club alias, proving that awkward circumstances do little to affect his prose.

Largely recorded in his childhood bedroom on a computer and on a tight budget, this bears the hallmark of great orchestral chamber-pop masterpieces of the past; Brian Wilson, Burt Bacharach & Scott Walker to name but a few. What distinguishes this from being merely a pale retread or note perfect retro-revivalist affair is Cullen's way with words.

Flittering between social commentary, harsh realism & romantic lines, you will have a hard task finding a lyricist as honest and unafraid to wear his heart on his sleeve. More often than not, a bleak outlook threatens to engulf you in a cloud of depression; as talk of broken homes, domestic violence & cold empty streets dominate.

Mark Cullen still writes anthems, only from a different perspective than before. On some occasions your own life could easily have been dictated to you, only told through an innocent bystanders experiences. Grandiose & ambitious, pleasantly overblown but made on his own terms. Like a council estate Spector, this man produces his very own wall of sound.

Destined to be an overlooked classic, don't pass this album by! Check it out for yourself and be amazed at how good it is. You're unlikely to find anything as brutally honest yet so sonically attractive, mark this one down as a triumph.

8/10