The setting is a dirty old jazz club. It's some ungodly hour of the night and a band is cranking out one last tune to a sparse crowd. The lead singer is hunched over the microphone with cigarette in hand. You open your eyes to find you're listening to Be Yourself, the new album by singer Jerry Fish (aka Ger Whelan) and his loose collective of musicians called the Mudbug Club with their mixture of jazz and blues music with a little folk, rock and gospel thrown in for good measure. Years of traveling and taking a break from the music industry after breaking off from his previous band, An Emotional Fish, have done Jerry Fish some good and given him a few tales to tell through his music. It must be said that even the most hard-line anti-capitalist can forgive him for selling off the brilliant gem True Friends to Vodafone after hearing his smooth yet gravely voice croon over such beautiful lyrics. The whole affair is rounded off by the uplifting yet never preachy title track that should leave listeners with a big smile on their face and shouting for yet another encore.
