Keiron Phelan and Peace Signs – Hullabaloo

Gard du Nord

Putting the ‘ability’ into reliability, Keiron Phelan’s body of work since the late-nineties has stretched dextrously from exemplary experimentalist explorations with State River Widening, Phelan Sheppard, Smile Down Upon Us and Littlebow to a contemporaneous role as an art-pop renaissance craftsman with his Peace Signs ensemble, with nary a wasted or insubstantial platter produced along the way.

Therefore, this fifth album accompanied by the latter enterprise arrives with the strong expectation of being another consistent concoction. Dutifully and rewardingly, Phelan and co. don’t abuse such presumptions with the honourable Hullabaloo.

Rebalanced slightly between melancholic balladeer and playful provocateur modes — in comparison to 2024’s preceding The Whole Band Just Turned Mellow — with a greater weight given to the former, this is a selection that benevolently plunders from and reflects on the past, whilst forging its distinctive band-mapped paths for Phelan’s nimble narratives and comforting croon.

Consequently, on the chirpier side, we’re welcomed from the off with a pedal steel, flute and piano-propelled scene setter (“Stripteaze Ya!”). Through the same strand, we’re subsequently swayed through vintage London pub rock filtered through ornate Divine Comedy melodicism (“Carmen Roller”); exquisitely lush Jonathan Goes Country-meets-Robert Forster-meets-yodelling uplift (“Swiss Army Knife”); Mungo Jerryised reggae manoeuvres (“Little Blue Sky”); and pastorally-coloured barroom reveries (“In Green Pasture”).

Meanwhile, in the moodier settings, you will find beatifically bleak spoken-word ruminations (“Robinson Crusoe”); languid, prowling and harmonising Americana (the title track); classical soul-soaked reminiscences (“’70s Pornography”); aching Burt Bacharach-tinged twinkling (“When I Get To Where I’m Going”); and a balmy folk traditional reinterpretation to close proceedings (“Green Rocky Road”).

Laced with earwormy and empathic traits throughout, collectively these are once again recordings that only Keiron Phelan and his Peace Signs could have conceived in such agile and heartwarming configurations. Any anxieties about a sequel set appearing with any discernible drop in quality are certainly on the exceedingly low side.

-Adrian-