Sean O'Brien and His Dirty Hands - Goodbye Game

  by Andrew Carver

published: 25 / 11 / 2008

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Hot on the heels of the re-release of ‘Seed of Mayhem’ comes Sean O’Brien’s ‘Goodbye Game’. Like its predecessor it’s a robust serving of post-Paisley Sound roots rock in the vein of Steve Wynn’s work after the breakup of The Dream Syndicate and Green on Red – not surprising given that O’Brien was weaned on the same sound around the same place. Like ‘Seeds of Mayhem’, much is not right with O’Brien’s world on ‘Goodbye Game’ – that’s why he’s advising a mental patient to ‘Take Your Pills’ on the album’s opening track and telling someone else on ‘Aftermath Fears’ that although he knows “They are stressed out!” they should get in line. It’s a place where probing for personal truths is as painful as breaking a limb (‘Bones Snap’). At the same time flickers of domesticity peep out between the dirty jangle of guitar. On the resigned country weeper ‘All That I Don’t Know’, O’Brien lets slip that perhaps intimacy doesn’t demand knowing every little secret. Is homelife all that it’s cracked up to be? There’s the offspring starting school next week and "barking orders for food"on the ‘Odyssey’-referencing ‘Home to Penelope’ which seems to conclude that Odysseus should have spent 10 years doing something else instead of trying to find his way home. The protagonist of rockabilly-influenced ‘New Home Tonight’ doesn’t seem to think so – even though he’s trying to find someone new to shack up with. Once again a capable cast of musicians flesh out O’Brien’s tunes with tasty guitar work along with flashes of organ and pedal steel, even chipping in an almost dubby instrumental ‘Get Over Tunis’. The dozen tunes on ‘Goodbye Game’ should easily endear themselves to fans of Nikki Sudden, Oz rockers like Brian Henry Hooper and Spencer P. Jones, the aforementioned Wynn or the acerbic side of Lou Reed.

Track Listing:-

1 Take Your Pills
2 Warm & Sane
3 Aftermath Fears
4 Bones Snap
5 All That I Don't Know
6 Hope Fill Up
7 Get over Tunis
8 Home to Penelope
9 New Home Tonight
10 Walk There Too
11 Bad Faith
12 Goodbye Game

Band Links:-

https://www.facebook.com/seanobrienandhisdirtyhands
http://www.seanobmusic.com/

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