Album Review

Sparrow & The Workshop – Shock Shock

• 13th Mar 2013

Jill O’Sullivan emits a rolling sequence of sharp, sharp vocals that convey a sense of something that may be part disappointment and part despair as “she swims against the tide to the bright, white light”. It’s all in the service of singing ‘Shock, Shock’, the just-released single from Sparrow & the Workshop.

The basic sound grates just a little but that is just what is required for an excellent backdrop to O’Sullivans’ maudlin muses. “Shadow spinning become outstretched thoughts” is the favoured lyric, making it twice into this brief muse. I feel her pain when I hear O’Sullivan veer towards the prospect of producing a song that an underwater Kate Bush would be proud of. It is a sad ditty, although ditty appears like an injustice to the sophistication and variety of the lyrics.

There’s not a lot to work on, with the swift trip over in two and a half minutes, but delve into the lyrics and there is a range of chants, not all of which make a lot of sense. But thrown together against the incessant melody and with the clarity of O’Sullivan’s voice, it kind of works.
And if there is a criticism, then it is that this is a fairly sad song. Cloaked in an underwater world, we are move into an “amber haze” that the sun has not “lit” and we are there to stay. The “outstretched arms” are just one of the few signs of despair that haunts any desire to delve any further into the lyrical content. It is certainly not the ‘Octopus’ Garden’.

Venue: Shock Shock
Support Band: Songbytoad