Taken from the album “Hobby Jingo”, released Nov 13th 2020 on Gare du Nord Records.
Footage by Helen Smith.
Keiron Phelan and Peace Signs are delighted to bring you the summer album that never was. Didn’t have a proper summer? Didn’t think so. Stage it now, with Hobby Jingo.
Songs about candy floss, cinnamon, Imogen, becoming your own perfumery, new best friends, long lost loves, winning Eurovision, faking your own Moon landing, juvenile poetry and the Kaiser Wilhelm II guide to romantic relationships.
Following on from 2018’s critically lauded eponymous debut, Keiron Phelan maintains his lyrical Neil Hannon-with-attitude posture, ups the Soul quota and heads straight for the Pop jugular. Sophisticated songcraft with flavours of Donovan, Bacharach, ‘London Boys’ Bowieand even a hint of Abbey Road Fabs, with some harder to define Radio 2-style pop classicism. Kinksesque acoustic swagger meets with Neo-New Romantic melodicism. Phelan’s Scott Walker-warm baritone hails hello to Stephen Duffy and sits atop bossa nova rhythms and music hall waltzes.
Two eclectic cover versions comprise a revisit to Aphrodite’s Child’s pensively emotive ‘Break’ and a transformation of Bill Fay’s gentle ‘Goodnight Stan’ via Rachmaninov piano into a flamboyant Suede style ballad. In Hobby Jingo’s darker moments Marianne Faithful and Marc Almond loiter, with intent, around the corner.
