For the uninitiated, Liam O’Kane is the big voiced front man of Do The Dog records’ skasters Jimmy The Squirrel. He also has a pretty fine sideline in solo, acoustic based stuff and this is a short run, 5 track EP that is tiding him over until the imminent release of a split album with Whitmore‘s Robb Blake.
The 5 songs on offer here (ok 4, the title track gets an extra acoustic only treatment at the end) demonstrate Liam’s ridiculous ability to play the most chilled out, rocksteady stuff without, seemingly, a care in the world. It’s not worlds apart from some of what Chris Murray does, similar sentiments about the good things in life, the power of music (the standout track is probably ‘In Music Lost‘, which pretty much sounds as you’d expect from the title). It may not be that original, but he has three things on his side: an outrageously impressive singing voice, an eye for writing a decent hook and the fact that not enough people are doing this stuff these days.
He’s been at it a while now and is one of this country’s better kept secrets. I’m fairly confident he will be getting around more and more.
Mike