Album: Only Real – Jerk At The End Of The Line

Released 30th March

Virgin EMI

7/10

Niall Galvin releases his first album as Only Real amidst a rising tide of anticipation. The London based artist finds himself signed to a major record label on the cusp of a UK/European tour, and it’s not hard to see why.

In Jerk At The End Of The Line, Galvin has deftly produced an album that feels very much at home amongst other contemporary offerings. With a seemingly broad melting pot of influences there’s a real diversity in sound, making it so hard to pin down to one genre. At times the songs evoke an almost Mac Demarco-meets-King Krule feeling, ‘Jerk’ and ’Cadillac Girl’ to name but two; in others the tone takes on a somewhat darker, more brooding, quality (‘Petals’ and ‘Break It Off’). With a constant sun-drenched jangle permeating most of the album, this is very much one for the long-overdue summer.

To totally define this album in terms of comparisons to his peers, however tempting it may be, would be to do Galvin a disservice. Diversity in the song writing facilitated, perhaps in part, by this genre spanning approach makes the album eminently listenable, with a smoothness making the songs often feel as though they might melt together. Whilst this does yield some fantastic pieces of music, at other times it gives the impression that perhaps the album isn’t going anywhere. Occasionally, some tracks are reduced to a blur between their more memorable companions.

In some ways, this chimes very well with the overall feel of the work, with a playfulness, humour, and relevance to the quotidian running through the vast majority of the songs. When Galvin delivers lines such as “You stay born for the baby’s life/Frightened minds, since 99/And you hate mornings, it’s crazy, right?” you get the impression that the album is a surreal take on the everyday and growing up as much as anything else; almost forgiving how some things pass you by.

Overall, Jerk At The End Of The Line is an impressive pop album well worth your time. The combination of hip-hop influence with twangy guitar yields an often-catchy result that would gladly soundtrack the very events that the songs themselves often deal with. It is a laudable debut that is surely only a taste of what is to come from Only Real.