Last Friday, Falkirk indie-folk five-piece Brògeal released their debut album, Tuesday Paper Club. Brig took the trip to Dundee to catch their first of a number of record store performances around the UK.
Only three of Brògeal had made it back to Scotland in time; the rest were still in Paris (and can you blame them?) Their first European tour had finished in the French capital on Wednesday night.
But the slimmed-down Brògeal still put on a great show for the 30 or so in attendance at Assai Record Store.
‘Tuesday Paper Club’, the eponymous tune, easily carries the weight of sharing its name with the album. A cult like group of paper boys (or rather, men) go for a few pints down the local after the shift. If any band could render this this poetic, it’s these lot. “Join the Tuesday Paper club, there’s solace in the news. If that don’t quite cut it, there’s solace in the booze,” and “you can hear a pin drop, if no for the rattle a pounds” are my favourite lines. I recommend the music video highly, which is also a masterpiece.
Friday on my mind is, according to Brògeal themselves, “a celebration of falling in love and living through the honeymoon period of a romantic relationship”. It’s proper, solid indie rock, and if it were released twenty years ago, I hazard to say it would’ve competed with the Strokes for number one.
‘Lady Madonna’, “the one that I just can’t have” has become an ear worm, I must admit (not that I’m complaining.) ‘Turn and Walk Away’ is also marvellous.
Lead singer Daniel Harkins wrote a poem about his beloved Falkirk and left it on his notes app. ‘Dippin’ n divin” now rightly takes its place in the middle of Tuesday Paper Club. It’s a charming addition.
‘Draw the Line’ is about the “sort of love island looking coke heads” who go around small towns selling drugs and “think they’re the hard man”. The song is thankfully more melodic than its central character.
In the final track, ‘Go Home Tae Yer Bed’, Brògeal worked with Josie Duncan from Lewis. The subject is a melancholy one and is treated beautifully by the poetry of Harkins. Josie Duncan, singing in Gaelic, turns it into the sort of folk song your grandad knows by heart. It is a contrast to the album’s indie element, yet in typical Brògeal fashion, the contrast is a natural one.
Brògeal worked with producer Richie Kennedy for the album, whose impressive previous client list includes the Libertines, Dua Lipa and The Last Dinner Party. Kennedy has worked his magic, that’s for sure, but let’s not do any discredit to Brògeal.
Tuesday Paper Club is undoubtedly, intensely Brògeal.
Referencing the turnout at their European shows, Harkins told me that the record label are “obviously doing their job”. That may be true, but Tuesday Paper Club is the only advertisement Brògeal will ever need.
Brògeal are on tour in the UK this November and December and will play two nights at Edinburgh’s The Caves.
Featured Image Credit: Frank Baker
