Info: From Dublin musician and producer, Pat McGovern (former electronic artist, Alphamono), comes the debut EP, The Woods, as The Pickled Onions. The Pickled Onions is a more organic indie/folk project all about writing songs and melodies with a focus on the listener, the first of three E.P.'s planned for release on the Storm in a Teacup label for 2016, The Woods' opening track, 'Please, please' is also the lead single.
Perhaps the most pleasing thing about The Pickled Onions' E.P. is how McGovern has served up five very distinct pieces of song-writing, loosely sticking within an open psychedelic / indie set of boundaries but coming from all sorts of angles within. 'Please, please' is a delightfully meandering slow-burner, probably the most obvious indicator of the self-admitted Beta Band influence on his music. Whilst the mood and sound feel light-hearted, the lyrics indicate and extremely personal experience which is also detectable in the vocal.
On 'Another Fine Mess' we're in a lovely mix of late-90's indie and tripped out 70's psych-folk and soul, I don't think I've ever come up with a weirder concoction in a description, but it's like Super Furry Animals morphed into the Bee Gee's and it works for me. The E.P.'s title track really grabbed, me, McGovern's electronic background in full swing, a beautiful instrumental, like a funfare march of the clowns, it's a tiny bit creepy, but this adds to the feeling of escapism and it prods your imagination in a captivating way.
By the time you reach the final track, 'Let Me In', you feel you've had sufficient variety to acknowledge that The Pickled Onions has talent in reserve, but there's still time for more tricks. Opening like something from a Sgt.Pepper outtake, the song swirls like smoke in a glass bottle between minimalist funk and blues guitars, very trippy sound effects and a thick lashing of contemporary neo-psychedelia. Often musicians move from guitar-based music to electronic music, and not the reverse, but this seems to have given an advantage to the artist here, he's not on a journey discovering something new, he's already there.
Follow & Listen:
Twitter: https://twitter.com/PickledPat
Bandcamp: http://thepickledonions.bandcamp.com/