Reviewed by Trevor Kirk

This album is difficult to classify: let me try to explain. Doyle Mills is a singer/songwriter from Omagh, Co Tyrone, Northern Ireland, and his professed influences range from The Beatles and The Pretenders via Bob Dylan and Nils Lofgren to Counting Crows. His style (according to his publicity) is a fusion of folk, rock and reggae, and whilst most of the contents of this 10 track CD have an acoustic guitar base, there are plenty of other instruments in evidence, including various electric guitars, cello, mandolin and tin whistle. So, taking all that into account, pop is probably about right. So far, so good, but despite the obvious effort that has gone into this, I can’t recommend it for several reasons, the most obvious being the production, which has an unpleasant flat, muddy quality, with no sparkle or clarity to it, and at times the mix is all over the place. Also, Doyle’s voice has a tendency to be almost everywhere except where it should be, namely, on the note, and coupled with a bunch of fair-to-average songs, it makes a rather depressing listening experience.

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