Reviews

Artist: Niall Quinn
Album: Under Same Sky
Label: Self Relased
Tracks: 13
Rating: ****
Contact:  www.niallquinn.co.uk

I can never understand why anyone would name the album after any track except the first of the last one. As they opening track it says here I am what do you think? As the last track is shows an album confidently signing off. Wat it says when the title sits at number 5, I've no idea.
When the track positioning is one of the biggest negatives you can find on an album is the location of the title track, you know that you're on to something pretty good and "Under Same Sky" is more than pretty good and it's originator knows how to pen a song..
I find it difficult to fault any songwriter who can get battenberg cake into the lyric of a song, particularly when the song also summons up images of waiters working hard to make sure the table is properly sorted for a couple in love..
Niall Quinn is a highly evocative writer. He places you the listener at the centre of most of the songs. Sometimes cast as an innocent bystander just watching the world go by, at other times shoulder to shoulder with the participants and on other occasions as the voyeur who can't quite turn away from the intimate scene unravaling in front of you.
Sometimes the songs are so stripped back you wonder what Niall is going to shed next. There's not a note wasted or a phrase un-necessarily added. Each song is the complete entity, you just feel that you want to give it a bowl of chicken soup to help get it's strength by, but really you know that there's plenty of strength there.
Niall delivers his songs with oodles of Gaelic charm. You can actually hear the twinkle in his eye. Quinn writes about life as he finds it. He has a big heart that he vocalises well. "Under Same Sky" is one of those albums that would add to any collection. Niall Quinn has a poets soul !

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