The Shadow of an Empire

Protection Racket’, the first single and opening song of _The Shadow of an Empire_, would have you believe that Fionn Regan has undergone some kind of musical metamorphosis. The truth is he hasn’t, at least not entirely. ‘Protection Racket’ is probably the new album’s most complete departure from his folk-orientated debut _The End of History_. Musically and lyrically it sounds like British punk and early electric Dylan, or like the British indie of the last decade – guitar parts either clean and jangly or overdriven and driving, lyrics a tongue in cheek gesture of dissent, and arrangements quite stark and simple. The rest of the songs sound somewhere between ‘Protection Racket’ and ‘The End of History’: some are folk, some electric and some both.

Great attention is paid to detail in the new folk songs. The acoustic guitar parts are, as on the last album, brilliant: complex but not over-written, varied and always interesting. Fionn Regan is remarkably good at weaving his fragmented vocal lines around the intricate melodies of his picking parts; he doesn’t crudely pile them up but has them make sense of each other, the vocals develop idea after idea while the guitar brings order through harmony and structure.

On the electric songs, though, he still sings the fragmented melodies, but over simple and repetitive indie guitar parts that don’t complement his singing nearly so well. Having said that, his angular phrasing does suit the harsher electric sound, and so does the increased energy and bite that these harsher sounds seem to have brought out in his voice. The problem, then, is in the arrangements.

Take, for example, the continual and repeated breaking down and building up of pace and dynamic in many of the electric songs. It seems a rather superficial and unsubtle technique for creating variety in a song. It also seems entirely unnecessary given that his lyrics, his performance and his usual subtle arrangements have proved more than enough to captivate listeners.

I suspect that this is simply a matter of inexperience in the new form. Perhaps by the next album, then, his electric music will have caught up with his acoustic music and will be able to do his song writing equal justice. Until then, _The Shadow of an Empire_ is well worth a listen. It has some wonderful songs, some beautiful musicianship and its lyrics are as insightful, entertaining and original as _The End of History_ leads one to hope.