Patrick Kelleher You Look Cold 2009

A 24-year-old-Dubliner with all of Joyce’s love for experimentation and all of Beckett’s restraint, this is Patrick Kelleher’s first LP. Like Ariel Pink, minus the tape hiss, Kelleher crafts songs to be sung outside closed windows, or from behind drawn curtains. Perry Como meets Passion Pit on ‘Until I Get Paid’, as sleepy “doo-wops” and grainy instrumentation sidle underneath Kelleher’s slinky tones. Elsewhere, 8-bit blitzkriegs are blasted in homage to Miami Vice (‘He Has To Sleep Sometime’) and ‘Coat To Wear’ is the track Owen Pallett wishes he’d written. Though the record swoops from texture to texture, it all remains united under a slight cloud of reverb. Ever tried. Ever failed? Oh no. Ever tried. Ever succeeded.