This is my first — and last, I would assume — shameless plug for a musician friend of mine. Actually, he’s a friend of a friend, but considering he’s Irish and we’ve been drinking together in Chicago once before, we’re practically friends.
Connolly is a singer/songwriter from Brooklyn, by way of Cork, Ireland. I first came to hear of him when my friend, Scott, met him during one of his trips to Ireland a couple of years ago.
He burned me a copy of his 2007 album, Future Tense, and I gave it a whirl. I had to admit, it was pretty solid.
I’m usually not one who goes for the singer/songwriters. While many of them are quite talented, I generally require more instrumentation and complexity to my music than just a dude and his guitar.
That being said, I could definitely tell that Connolly had some chops. While his Irish lilt is ever-present, his sound can’t really be pigeonholed into the Damien Rice/Glen Hansard ilk. His vocals and song-crafting styles could easily be mistaken for somebody born in the States.
A couple of my favorites from the aforementioned album are “70,000 Words” and “If You Find Me In Morocco”. I can still remember singing along to the former when I saw Connolly live at Atlantic Bar in Chicago during Scott’s ill-fated debut as a concert promoter.
Future Tense was Connolly’s third full-length release, and he has since added two more, including a live album in 2008 and Brother, the Fight is Fixed, which comes out July 1.
Scott flew out to NYC to help Connolly shoot the video for the first single, “Jesus Is Coming (And I Can’t Pay the Rent)”. The song is catchy as hell, and the video isn’t bad either. I particularly liked the two lip-synching women.
For more on Connolly, check out his official website or his MySpace page.
Infinite Shuffle 
Leave a Reply