Album Review

Beautiful Unit – European Son

• 21st Apr 2009

With ‘European Son’ Brian Mooney (operating under his solo act alias of Beautiful Unit) has delivered an evocative arrangement based album akin to a low-fi musical river meandering its way through a diverse multi instrumental landscape; it’s electronic based flows occasionally eroding into the banks of alternative blues rock with wonderful results.

European Son clocks in at just under half an hour, with the balance of songs weighted in favour of the instrumentals. The few numbers which feature lyrics are hit and miss in their affectivity.‘Only the Mediocre Survive’ feels forced and just doesn’t ring true, yet on ‘Waitress’ he succinctly sums up so many people’s day to day existence in the eloquent lyric “we are all just waitresses waiting on life”. However the way he expertly pairs ‘They Built a Road Through It’, (whose industrial instrumental sound evokes the countryside devastation hinted at by the song title) alongside ‘Goodbye to the Hill’ (with its languid brass accompaniment suggesting a funereal salute) confirms he possesses that rare skill of weaving a musical narrative within an album, and quells any doubts we may have about his songwriter credentials.

He also possesses a knack for marrying low-fi electro with the blues. ‘Trust Me I’m a Thief’ feels like a blues piano lounge has been commandeered by one of the dirtiest, most commanding bass lines in the business, and the results are impressive (this delightful combination returns on ‘The Cause of Death is Birth’).

However to revisit the (laboured) river metaphor, this album occasionally diverts into babbling brooks of frivolity. Though only amounting to a little over two minutes of the album’s total runtime there is little room for such exercises in whimsy on an album already painfully short on music.

Nevertheless there is much to enjoy within this album, but those who are deterred from repeat listens (for any number of reasons such as the brevity, abundance of instrumental arrangements, or the general unevenness of the albums tone) will miss an awful lot of the pleasure to be derived from this little gem.