The first thing that will grab you when you listen to Niall McDowell’s excellent debut album is the voice. It is an absolute weapon that would excel in any genre. Timeless, pitch perfect and capable of expressing half a dozen emotions within a couple of lines. It’s the kind of voice that you imagine the studio engineer listened to for the first time, took off his headphones, reclined in his chair and said “…finally.”
Intriguingly self-defined by the artist as ‘alt-country’, ‘Put Your Hands Where I Can See Them’ runs across a gamut of themes including grief, loss and the queer experience. In lesser hands, this could have resulted in a disjointed LP, but Niall has a clear artistic identity that ensures each song connects to the one before it sonically while offering enough diversity in scope and sound to give each song its own reason for existing.
His influences are obvious; there’s a touch of Jeff Buckley to his voice, but there are striking similarities to other Irish artists such as Joshua Burnside and CMAT, the latter particularly coming across through his country-inspired palette and clever, often humorous lyrics.
It’s an album of standouts, a collection of vignettes and short stories so evocative and self-assured that it boggles the mind that this is only LP1. ‘Waiting on the Bus’ is perhaps the most striking example of Niall’s songwriting prowess- a clever hook paired with an instantly memorable melody as he compares the futility of losing love with the mundane reality of his own vehicular shortcomings.
The title track, expertly positioned as the album’s finale, is beautiful and devastating; a perfect summation of the project’s overreaching themes and unanswered questions. It also encapsulates what makes Niall so compelling as an artist- you believe and relate to every word he says, to the point where it ceases to become someone else’s story and becomes a haunting shared experience.
If there is any criticism to be made and it feels like nitpicking with an offering this strong; it would be that in crafting such a cohesive musical sound, sometimes the songs themselves cry out for a little more experimentation. It seems strange to critique an artist for having such confidence in their own sound, but there are occasions where the instrumentation doesn’t quite match the emotion on display in his voice.
There is a happy medium to be struck, and in most cases he achieves this, but it wouldn’t hurt to push the boat out a little more. The content and the ability is clearly there, so if he can diversify the sonic landscapes he wanders through, he will be unstoppable.
