Drop-d review
13 January 2010
Miss Paula Flynn
Posted on October 29, 2009 by Aoibheann Maguire
Women have certainly triumphed, in the music business, in 2009. And while I adore, the fact, that my gender finally has the fortitude to write brilliant pop songs, about crap lovers, and turn the art of writing bitter love-songs into an even playing-field, alá Florence Welsh and La Roux. As the year draws to a close, showing your tender side could easily prove to be an even braver force to be reckoned with.
Miss Paula Flynn
Miss Paula Flynn has tiptoed into the spotlight, in late 2009, with the release of her first solo album. An album, regardless of some of the dark underlying themes of the songs, that is brimming with elegance and romance. Proving the theory that you don’t need to scream and shout to get your message across. Fans of punk poet Jinx Lennon will be familiar with Miss Paula Flynn’s stunning voice (she regularly features on his work).
She has a voice, which is so stupendously soft and sweet, that many people who have heard this, Armagh, woman sing have urged her to make an album of her own. The result of this persistent persuasion, by members of the public, is a lengthy collection of songs, 17 in total, on her captivating self-titled debut.
There is clearly an alt-country tag that could, casually, be used to describe this album, but in doing so it grasses over the soulfulness of the songs, which could easily be read aloud as poems. Boxed In, for example, is a spoken word piece that awakens the listener, not only because of the change in style, but because of the uncomfortable truth, of the reality, of getting boxed into an unhappy existence.
It’s not all pink elephants though! If anything, this album has a definite pop sensibility with radio friendly hits such as: Goldfish At The Fair/Magic/ Ghost in My Car. When Miss Paula Flynn is not covering existential themes this lady’s voice has a grace that delivers much to mere woh-ohs and ahhs. If this album is heard by the “right” people Miss Paula Flynn could certainly carve a career for herself stateside, or perhaps, fittingly, soundtrack movies in the same way Aimee Mann’s music has been very useful to directors in moving a story along. The songs really are that poignant, but more importantly for us – they’re addictive
Drop-d Rating: 9.5/10
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Thursday December 03 2009
From little boots to Lady Gaga, from Florence and the Machine to St Vincent, even the most unmusically minded can't ignore the fact that 2009 was chock-full of interesting releases by women.
From Speech Debelle's Mercury Prize win to Whitney's comeback, if this year was an ad, some lazy advertising exec would pinch Here Come the Girls from Boots for the soundtrack. In Irish terms, the past 12 months have been particularly stellar, not just because of the number of women making music and being recognised for it, but for the sheer breadth of what they're doing. Imelda May's meteoric rise has made rockabilly mainstream, and Miss Paula Flynn showed you can reinvent yourself after having a very big first hit. Lisa Hannigan's year has included rave US reviews for Sea Sew, a Jay Leno appearance and, like May, she played the über-stage that is Glastonbury.
It's not that long since international acclaim and a profile outside of Ireland existed only for a handful of Irish acts, and very few of them were women. Even the ones that sold records and broke into the US -- The Corrs and Sinéad O'Connor -- made music that was chart-friendly and had the backing of a major label. Now a new generation of Irish women in music is proving that not only do you not need a record label to get noticed (step forward Julie Feeney and Miss Paula Flynn), but you can be as eclectic as you like. Valerie Francis's take on the singer-songwriter canon is as unusual as it is accessible -- and who are we to argue if Kanye West is a fan? Julie Feeney fuses pop and orchestral composition and is indicative of how boundaries -- musical, gender and otherwise -- are gradually fading away. The result is a broad landscape of challenging, interesting music where -- boys with guitars are making way for girls with harps, batons, cellos and great voices.
MISS PAULA FLYNN
The name might not ring a bell but you've definitely heard Paula Flynn sing. Her vocals featured on a version of Let's Dance in an ad for bottled water, which EMI later released as a single. With her music career taking off, her background in radio took a short break, but this year she began presenting an alternative country show on RTé's 2XM and is working on a radio documentary for RTé. Although her self-titled debut was only released in September, she is working on album number two and plans to tour in 2010.
www.misspaulaflynn.com
- Sinead Gleeson
Happy Christmas - again
3 December 2009