Bressie is a busy man. The former Blizzard, Leinster player (seriously, look it up) and current judge on RTE's incredibly popular The Voice of Ireland has a knack for achieving success at whatever he sets his mind to. His second solo album, Rage and Romance, has shot straight to the summit of the charts but the real test isn't so much getting to those lofty heights, it's whether or not he can stay there - and initial signs are good.
Rage and Romance is a slick, glossy and well-produced album and this is hardly surprising when you consider the team behind it. Much of the record was co-written by James Walsh (he of Starsailor) and produced by Eliot James, a man often tasked with guiding a promising pop act into the mainstream, as he did with the debuts of Bloc Party and Two Door Cinema Club.
But is it any good? Well, yes, it is. It's a very solid pop album, highlighting Bressie's qualities, namely his ability to pen a perfectly radio-friendly pop tune. The album's flaws, of which there are a few, are mostly papered over. Rage and Romance is at its best, for example, when the mix is thick with James' excellent production but it's the instances when the songs becomes too bogged down with unnecessary ballads that the collection appears in danger of collapsing under its own weight.
Bressie could well be Ireland's answer to Robbie Williams. There's even a little Beck in there too, with songs like the title-track and 'Show Me Love' demonstrating that Bressie's rock roots are still very much intact. While this album isn't going to break any records, it's a very solid, foot-tappingly radio friendly pop record and those words alone, in this writer's opinion anyway, is proof that Bressie has achieved exactly what he set out to do.
