Yahoo! Music Album Review

Released on 21/10/04
Label: Sony

The reinvention of Bryan to Brian has been a pretty shameless affair. Earlier this year, the big-boned one tearfully split from Westlife and declared that he wanted independence/to spend more time with his family/a three-day week. A few months later it transpired what he actually meant to say was, “Please Jim, let me be Robbie Williams.”
So: one beard, Atkins diet and phone call to Guy Chambers later, we had Brian Mk II – a ‘real’ man armed only with a shoulder full of woe and an acoustic guitar, which is a pretty dangerous combination in just about any circumstances.
After a number one single that declared undying love for his family over the bullshit world of pop he promptly got divorced.
And while it’s difficult having sympathy for one who plays out his life through the pages of celebrity magazines (and who, along with estranged wife Kerry, employs the Machiavellian hand of Max Clifford) it’s now time to put up or shut up. Does Brian have ‘real’ talent or just delusions of grandeur?
In truth, the results are not a world away from his previous band. The lyrics might be more personal and the backing music more guitar-based, but the sheen of corporate production remains. Not that that’s a bad thing. Much like Robbie or Ronan, McFadden is hardly appealing to your average Oasis customer here - just fans of his boyband past who might have grown up. And if the alternative meant donning a tuxedo and performing on the worst album ever made (that’s Westlife’s “Allow Us To Be Frank” if you even needed to ask) you can understand his desire to jump ship.
In fact, in the narrow, Cowellified definition of modern pop, the singles “Real To Me” and “Irish Son” are about as revolutionary as Dylan going electric. It’s certainly doubtful whether McFadden’s previous Il Divo-loving taskmaster would have permitted a single slagging off the Catholic church - especially if it opened with the immortal couplet, “I was born in the heart of Dublin/Back when being gay wasn't cool.”
Unfortunately, musically we’re probably closer to the sort of lampposts marked by Bryan Adams (“Pull Myself Away”) or, worse, Enrique Iglesias (“He’s No Hero”). Verses are shamelessly designed to highlight the pain of it all – arguably to the point of exploitation when McFadden drags in the kids for “Sorry Love Daddy” - while the choruses are suitably lighter-wavingly anthemic.
As rebirths go it’s occasionally convincing, although the closing duet with Delta Goodrem, “Almost Here”, is so sickly sweet as to remind you that Westlife’s Bryan is only a stubble’s breadth away.
Ultimately, the best you can say about McFadden is that he’s unexceptionally inoffensive and probably of equal talent to the other thousand buskers who populate the streets of Dublin. The worst? That he’s a willing participant in a dumbed-down tabloid world that puts the failed marriage of two 21-year-old kids on their front covers.
We’ll have to wait for album number two to know quite where he falls, but there’s certainly no “Angels” on “Irish Son”. Until then, the world belongs to Heat magazine. We’ll just have to live in it.

    by Adam Webb