Free Download: The Brilliant Trees – Don’t Believe The Right
Not only is this a great album but it also provided a small group of us the opportunity to act the eejit for a couple of years around the mid-nineties. For a time there was nothing to beat the Brilliant Trees experience. The Finglas band had an exhilarating live presence which meant their gigs were raucous events full of jangling guitars, energetic vocals and intermittent football chants (!). ‘Friday Night’ was the bands sparkling debut; stacked high with indie anthems it also carried a message (listen to the lyrics on ‘Home’) which gave the record extra gravitas. Alan Hoey’s vocals were instinctive and lead the line superbly and his accelerated delivery was only matched by the freewheeling chiming chords. We’re very proud to present this reissue to you, it means a lot to us and hopefully in time it will become something you’ll treasure as well.
To give some perspective here is Tony Barrett from the band with his version of what happened on ‘Friday Night’.
“I suppose after 12 years since the recording of Friday Night I can look at the album through slightly less rose tinted glasses than I did then. Never the less I think the record has worthy moments of which I am to this day still quite proud. An honest record put together on a shoestring and recorded in 10 long hard days at cannibal studios Dublin. I cant help feeling we were among the fore runners of bands which tried hard to pull Irish bands away from a rock oriented sound towards a new sound, jangle down stroke guitars with melody sweet voices and politics. Songs from the city in which we lived. I remember playing a TV show at the time and the presenter described us as rough diamonds. I suppose Friday Night was a bit of a rough diamond too, but hey who wants to be polished.”
Press Quotes
‘The Irish quartet walk in the cemented footprints of early-’90s shoe gazers Ride, Catherine Wheel, and the Stone Roses, while their predominantly jangly guitar rhythms chime in pop perfection worthy of the La’s.’
‘If you put Billy Bragg, the Smiths, and the Jam into a blender, you might begin to describe the Brilliant Trees’
The Boston Pheonix
‘Talent ruffled the Irish charts and those who bothered to seek out the album could see that the Brilliant Trees were a sublime prospect’
mp3hugger
*** If you’ve read this far then you are really a fan and we’re thankful. Listen to the closing exchanges of ‘You Have Changed’ and you’ll hear an instrumental at fade out. It is taken from a song that the band never recorded called ‘If I Die’. In saying that it made it onto a radio session (for the Dave Fanning show) and we’ve got a really lo-fi (i mean really lo-fi) version of it so if you’d like to hear it just give me a shout and I’ll email it on. Love this band. ***