Liam Dullaghan

TONY CLAYTON-LEA

Making History Signal/ Noise ****

Finally, the link between Northampton, Nashville and New York City has been established. Some years back, UK singer and songwriter Liam Dullaghan decided to sell his guitars in Northampton and return from roaming to live in his parents’ garage and fix radios.

A chance encounter with a record producer made Dullaghan examine his career options, and before you could sing a Big Star tune he was working on Making History. Northampton’s loss is our gain, for this is a record that swells with pride. Lyrically, it’s quite downbeat, but in every other way it’s an amalgam of the joys of The Replacements, Teenage Fanclub, Pernice Brothers and Big Star. Think sweet Americana fused with power pop and you’re halfway there.


Think one of the best records of its type to pass this way in an age.

- The Irish Times

Scott Edgar: When I get to the end of a night trawling through CDs and websites it’s usually been something of a chore and very rarely do I uncover something as aurally pleasing as Liam Dullaghan. There’s no monotonous finger picking or warbling vocals. Likewise there’s no clear effort to sound too much like anyone else. What we get here is an album of accomplished folk, pop and indie tunes with samples, strings, the crackle of a worn out record and some mighty big hooks and choruses. While Radio Verona has received play on 6Music it’s I’m Just Fucked Without You that’s got me hooked with it’s almost punky honesty and sweeping guitar riffs. This is probably what Conor Oberst would sound like if he could hit the notes

Thomas Moyser: Liam Dullaghan writes simple, old-fashioned lounge-pop with lyrics that are intelligent and subtle. Album opener Radio Verona is the pop song that would blaze from the car stereo if a Grand Theft Auto game were set in Renaissance Italy. After that Dullaghan tends to succeed better when he shifts things up-tempo – since his voice is neither technically strong or characterfully distinct enough to pull off the other slow numbers. I like a voice that tells me something about the singer, something that the lyrics themselves can’t. Dullaghan is a cut above the rest as a songwriter but he needs to find himself a unique voice from wherever he can get one.


James Rutherford: Liam Dullaghan nearly made it as a member of indie band The Havenots, however, fate had other plans and he has delivered a wonderfully forlorn solo debut - loneliness never sounded so good. Although the themes of unrequited love, loss and solitude are consistent throughout the record, the sound and style shifts from Americana enthused pop to lively high tempo indie to touches of folk and country – all with the odd flourish. On top of the instant affection, Dullaghan’s music continues to grow with each listen and reminds me, at times, of an understated Rocco Deluca. Personal favourites are Paradise Beach, one of the louder tracks with a great orchestral/rock finale - I Fell Through The Night Like A Stone which, despite the title, has an odd but irrepressible warmth – and the title track with its whispy vocals, immaculate strings and heartfelt lyrics of uncertainty and desperation. Whether you’ve just been dumped or not this is a really enjoyable record – but probably more so if you have.

- For Folks Sake

Hometown: Northampton.

The lineup: Liam Dullaghan (guitar, vocals).

The background: Liam Dullaghan, a lifelong fan of Big Star, the Replacements and Wilco, will surely be delighted to be told that he sounds American. He is one of those characters operating at the frontier between between Americana and power pop. The sound he makes veers between fast and slow, but even when it's frantic it seems forlorn. Somehow, it manages to sound rootsy – because it is mainly played on guitar, with a little pedal steel, bass, guitar, some keyboards and strings for comfort or company, or both – and polished, because it is full of lovely little details, took three years to create and apparently nearly drove its perfectionist creator mad.

What stops it being one of those raw and ragged troubadour discs and puts it in a pop class is Dullaghan's melodic sensibility and breathy vocals. We're not sure if there's a sigh-o-meter that can measure such things, but we feel sure his wispy voice would appear only slightly closer on the scale towards Colin Blunstone than it would to Elliott Smith (albeit some distance, it hardly needs saying, from, say, Phil Anselmo of Pantera). All soft and sibilant, it makes everything on his album Making History sound airy and light, even when things get riffy and rough, which does happen, but not a lot.

They say Dullaghan turns sadness into something quite lovely, and we won't argue with that. Neither will be argue with the fact that he used to be in a band called the Havenots, although we reserve judgment on the assessment by one magazine of the latter's "rosy harmonies" as sounding "cured in Benedict Canyon circa 1970" because we never heard a note by them, although we are tempted to investigate, especially now that we've heard Making History. Apparently, Dullaghan made it after "an ill-fated trip to Chicago" to record a new Havenots album left him homeless, at which point he sold all of his guitars, moved into his parents' garage and didn't pen a song for ages, working instead fixing radios at a local hospital.

His return to the fray with Making History occurred after a chance encounter with producer and multi-instrumentalist Lee Russell, encouraging him to make his first solo record in a Wesleyan chapel. We're not sure what a Wesleyan chapel is, but we're guessing that what Dullaghan wants to convey with this information is the sense of mania and devotion behind the project. He wants it to be seen as a labour of, not just love, but of mad love, one of those borderline sick-obsessed or close-to-collapse affairs that he grew up admiring such as Big Star's legendary Third/Sister Lovers or the Replacements' Let It Be. "When I met Lee I couldn't believe my luck," he has said. "Finally I'd met someone as stupid as me – someone who was happy to throw three years of their life away trying to join that list."

Making History doesn't quite belong in that damaged company, but it is a splendid record full of achingly pretty moments worthy of, at the least, the Pernice Brothers circa the World Won't End or Teenage Fanclub circa Bandwagonesque. Opener Radio Verona is near-perfect in its evocation of Dennis Wilson's Cuddle Up and talk of love as "a fairy tale, a business deal". Paradise Beach ends with a nice orchestral-rock flourish – he gives good coda, actually, does Dullaghan, even if, as enigmatic minute-long album closers go, Goodnight is no ST 100/6. He won't make history, or enter the sick-rock pantheon, but he might give Joe Pernice a few sleepless nights.

The buzz: "He does sadness so well, I think he might actually be enjoying it. I am" – Alan Moore.

The truth: He's not a wasted face or a sad-eyed lie, let alone a holocaust, but he sure sings pretty.

Most likely to: Take care.

Least likely to: Stroke it Noel.

What to buy: Making History is released on 4 April by Signal/Noise.

File next to: Elliott Smith, Andrew Morgan, Pernice Brothers, Teenage Fanclub.

Links: You can hear the album here.

- The Guardian