Andy White
Rave On Andy White

The eighties, for many, represented a decade to be erased from the rock annals. Probably, those who experienced their adolescence and maturity during that period don't think the same. As in all debates, the lines of thought are numerous, and it becomes excessively tiresome to argue whether that period was indeed more detrimental musically compared to before and after.

The album I chose to present to you today happens to date back to 1986. It is the debut of a young man in his early twenties from Belfast who, right from the cover, seems to clearly reveal his influences to us. I challenge anyone to associate that "poor" black-and-white shot with the eighties, as well as the graphics, with the titles prominently displayed on the front instead of the back (speaking of which, the eighties are at least debatable in terms of look as well).

Rather, the immediate association evoked by the artwork is with the Bob Dylan of the sixties, the one from the Village who presents himself as the new troubadour for a new generation of listeners. Also throughout all ten tracks of the album, the prevailing atmosphere is that of the committed singer-songwriter. It's no coincidence that Our Guy attempts, besides singing, also the guitar and harmonica, instruments par excellence of the genuine singer-songwriter.

Compared to Bob Dylan, there is a noticeable use of more instrumentation, and some tracks sound slightly Irish oriented, at times resembling certain Waterboys-style ballads.

The lyrics leave no room for sentimentality, they talk about mercenary soldiers, about whiskey gulped down to forget, about homages to his city, as in the immense, conclusive "The Big Rain", the age-old and never-extinguished conflict between Protestants and Catholics in the venomous "Religious Persuasion", and the few times he opens up to love, he does so with the authoritative air of one ready to suffer, living more in memories than in the present.

Andy White's maturity in this debut work is impressive, making it resonate from the first to the last note with an inner strength worthy of the greatest.

This won't last long. Already in the following "Kiss The Big Stone", if not for a couple of strokes of class, the muse will begin to turn her back on him, to abandon him definitively shortly thereafter, quickly relegating him to oblivion, despite still being active with a dozen albums to his credit.   But it is with this dazzling debut that Andy White awakens us from that plastic period and wonderfully takes us back on an imaginary backward journey to those mythical sixties.