EP Review – Evening Primrose by Neil Brogan (2021) (Self released)
Since announcing the natural end of his brilliant, Belfast based Sea Pinks band, Neil Brogan has been wonderfully prolific, releasing two albums and two EP’s since August 2020.
All of these releases jangle with the typical zest of his previous band, but thrive upon the man’s lust for understated indie-pop, irreverence and a celebration, appreciation and genuine understanding of the importance of the minutiae of life.
Whereas his other releases had loose themes that he wrapped his life observations around, this EP somehow feels like the odds and ends that did not quite fit on the previous releases. All perfectly erudite in their own sense, but imbuing the release with a sense of slightly existentialist scattershot, which somehow enables his perfectly strange sense of humour to thrive.
As such we see the EP’s superlative stand out, Unfollow Me, swathe the bouncy, jangly, U.S. Highball style indie-pop, over a self-deprecating humour that ridicules himself for caring about who follows him on social media, as he adds such concerns to the ‘millions of other things’ he needs to worry about.
Perhaps the worries hinted at in the above track, are revealed into more definitive anxiety battles, as Brogan uses the Iggy Pop meets Parker Longbough fuzz of Holiday From Myself, to identify his need to get away from not only people, but the general company of his own mind. It’s all hidden in melodic fuzz, but he is perhaps offering more insights into himself, than the dynamism of the tunes would naturally offer.
The above tracks are bookended by the opening Evening Primrose and the closing Paper Crown, which are perhaps more typical of the post Sea Pinks ‘Brogan re-invention’. Here, slight pop-rock inflections are juxtaposed against Big Thief style laconic, jangled riffs, that beguile and engage the listener in equal measures.
Brogan will undoubtedly be back with more brilliance in a few months time, but until then these four tracks of odds and ends, will quench our increasing thirst for this solo project.
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