It’s worth a lot more but until Saturday (4th July) you can buy the mighty Reservoir for one dolla. They’re even throwing in a 4-track EP for nothing on top of that. Fanfarlo are lucky that Arcade Fire are on a hiatus because they share the same kind of epic heart and there’s probably only enough swelling emotion in the world for one of these bands at a time. ‘Drowning Men’ even gets off on a near-carbon copy piano/bass motif as ‘Rebellion (Lies)’.
Despite the similarities in tone, Reservoir has plenty to recommend. It’s flush with great tunes with sweeping autumnal strings, crescendos, boisted by violin and trumpet and dashes of cellos, mandolins, ukeleles and melodicas. All of this is drawn together by the voice Simon Balthazar who Maldini reminded me how much he sounds like the pithy-voiced Alec Ounsworth of Clap Your Hands Say Yeah!. Despite all the comparisons, Reservoir could be one of this year’s best and it’s only a dollar for the next two days so buy it! I did.
Fanfarlo – Harold T. Wilkins by Stachemou from Stachemou on Vimeo.
Niall Byrne is the founder of the most-influential Irish music site Nialler9, where he has been writing about music since 2005 . He is the co-host of the Nialler9 Podcast and has written for the Irish Times, Irish Independent, Cara Magazine, Sunday Times, Totally Dublin, Red Bull and more. Niall is a DJ, founder of Lumo Club, club promoter, event curator and producer of gigs, listening parties & events in Dublin.
I got my credit card bill for last month recently and the exchange people at Mastercard decided that this $1 album equated to €0.77. That’s certainly not a bad price!
Jeysus, they do sound like Arcade Fire, even the vocals.