The Upcoming
  • Cinema & Tv
    • Movie reviews
    • Film festivals
      • Berlin
      • Tribeca
      • Sundance London
      • Cannes
      • Locarno
      • Venice
      • London
      • Toronto
    • Show reviews
  • Music
    • Live music
  • Food & Drinks
    • News & Features
    • Restaurant & bar reviews
    • Interviews & Recipes
  • Theatre
  • Art
  • Travel & Lifestyle
  • Literature
  • Fashion & Beauty
    • Accessories
    • Beauty
    • News & Features
    • Shopping & Trends
    • Tips & How-tos
    • Fashion weeks
      • London Fashion Week
      • London Fashion Week Men’s
      • New York Fashion Week
      • Milan Fashion Week
      • Paris Fashion Week
      • Haute Couture
  • Join us
    • Editorial unit
    • Our writers
    • Join the team
    • Join the mailing list
    • Support us
    • Contact us
  • Competitions
  • Facebook

  • Twitter

  • Instagram

  • YouTube

  • RSS

CultureMusicAlbum reviews

Eugene McGuinness – The Invitation to the Voyage

Eugene McGuinness – The Invitation to the Voyage | Album review
13 August 2012
Craig Elliot
Avatar
Craig Elliot
13 August 2012

Eugene McGuinness is a super cool alt/indie singer-songwriter and he has enthralling music videos. His new album The Invitation to the Voyage was recently released on Domino (his third for the label) and features a blend of brazen swagger with a slightly unhinged, sinister twist. It does, however, amount to something slightly less than it probably should.

The imaginative and charismatic turns of Lion and Thunderbolt are particularly vibrant; the drunken brass lines at the climax of the latter flesh out and warp an otherwise unremarkable tune, while the nightmarish and danceable former track has loopy ideas to spare. 

In fact, therein lies the problem with The Invitation to the Voyage; it’s bursting at the seams with ideas and Eugene McGuinness clearly has a knack for weird and wonderful instrumentation, but the fundamental elements of the songs, the melodies, the lyrics and the structures are rather bland. Sugarplum, for example, has comparatively straight-forward instrumentation (drum machine, synth strings, fuzz bass) and a strong, directional hook for the chorus making it one of the most memorable songs of the bunch, but even so, it’s still not particularly inspiring. 

Though McGuinness has a powerful voice and he delivers his vocals with attitude (though occasionally veering a bit too close to the operatic), there is still something rather characterless about it. Some of his vocal gymnastics are indeed impressive and there’s no doubt that he must shine as a live performer, but in a song such as 80s-fest Japanese Cars, in which he attempts his best David Bowie impression, they’re not all that striking. 

That is really a small complaint though, in the grand scheme of the album. His lyrics, on the other hand, are really rather lacking. The aforementioned Thunderbolt, for example, contains such gems as: “I leave my room on a moonbeam to the ministry of sound,” and “And the Gods are drunk, snorting stardust, they feast on our fears, and spunk on our trust”. That really is just the tip of the iceberg. More evidence can be seen in clumsy metaphors such as: “I hear a rhapsody for a concrete moon, below a chandelier of frozen tears I loom”. The list could quite easily go on.

It is certainly an interesting listen with stuttering, confounding and enlivening production techniques, instrumentation, ideas and a bombastic attitude. It feels, however, as though he is yet to tie it all together into something really memorable. 

★★★★★

Standout track: Thunderbolt

Craig Elliott

The Invitation to the Voyage is released on 6th August 2012.

Listen to Thunderbolt here:

Related Itemsreview

More in Album reviews

Lykke Li – EYEYE

★★★★★
Georgia Howlett
Read More

Florence and the Machine – Dance Fever

★★★★★
Ronan Fawsitt
Read More

Warpaint – Radiate Like This

★★★★★
Catherine Sedgwick
Read More

Arcade Fire – We

★★★★★
Ronan Fawsitt
Read More

Blossoms – Ribbon Around the Bomb

★★★★★
Georgia Howlett
Read More

Memorial – Memorial

★★★★★
Mae Trumata
Read More

Fontaines DC – Skinty Fia

★★★★★
Jasper Watkins
Read More

Girlpool – Forgiveness

★★★★★
Charlie Peters
Read More

Patrick Watson – Better in the Shade

★★★★★
Catherine Sedgwick
Read More
Scroll for more
Tap
  • Popular

  • Latest

  • TOP PICKS

  • Albert Adrià reopens Enigma on 7 June as a “fun-dining” restaurant and cocktail bar
    Food & Drinks
  • Paolo Nutini at the 100 Club
    ★★★★★
    Live music
  • Crimes of the Future: Three new clips from David Cronenberg’s dystopian body horror film
    Cannes
  • The Father and the Assassin at the National Theatre
    ★★★★★
    Theatre
  • Plan 75
    ★★★★★
    Cannes
  • November (Novembre)
    ★★★★★
    Cannes
  • Forever Young (Les Amandiers)
    ★★★★★
    Cannes
  • “Ruben is wonderful at picking holes in our behaviour and our egos”: Woody Harrelson, Ruben Östlundand and cast at the Triangle of Sadness press conference
    Cannes Film Festival 2022
  • Summer Scars (Nos Cérémonies)
    ★★★★★
    Cannes
  • Holy Spider (Les Nuits de Mashad)
    ★★★★★
    Cannes
  • Emergency
    ★★★★★
    Movie review
  • Men
    ★★★★★
    Cannes
  • Triangle of Sadness
    ★★★★★
    Cannes
  • Aftersun
    ★★★★★
    Cannes
  • Paris Memories (Revoir Paris)
    ★★★★★
    Cannes
The Upcoming
Pages
  • Contact us
  • Join mailing list
  • Join us
  • Our London food map
  • Our writers
  • Support us
  • What, when, why
With the support from:
International driving license

Copyright © 2011-2020 FL Media

The Expendables 2 | Movie review
The Expendables 2 premiere