The CLUAS Archive: 1998 - 2011

12

My Brother Woody 'It's a Long Way From That Sort of Thing You Were Raised'Review Snapshot: At its heart this is a happy album, full of innocence and charm, with some excellent songs and catchy hooks. Everything you want in a disposable summer album, but little more.

The CLUAS Verdict: 7 out of 10

Full Review: 
Cute is not a word I’d often associate with albums, but it’s one that just keeps recurring when I think about My Brother Woody’s 'It’s A Long Way from That Sort of Thing You Were Raised'. I don’t know if it is how they were raised or something they picked up along the way, but this album is all honest charm and good nature. Even the long-winded title is apt… in a totally unusual and inimitable way.

It’s all in the inescapable Irishness of this album: although gladly lacking in fiddles and faux-celtic-air melodies and although much has been made of it’s good vibrations, Californian overtones and ‘bops, oohs and aahs‘, lyrically and sentimentally, My Brother Woody’s hook-driven tracks are inescapably the product of the modern Irish humour and lifestyle.

With songs like 'Getting Old Goes With Getting Fat', 'Wish I Was a DJ 'and 'Super Serotonin Girl', this album shows a complete lack of the pretensions and self-consciousness of other musicians, while displaying a superb song-writing talent and well-developed musicianship almost hidden beneath its sweet cheer.

Anna Murray


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Nuggets from our archive

2004 - The CLUAS Reviews of Erin McKeown's album 'Grand'. There was the positive review of the album (by Cormac Looney) and the entertainingly negative review (by Jules Jackson). These two reviews being the finest manifestations of what became affectionately known, around these parts at least, as the 'McKeown wars'.