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Andrew Keoghan - Album Review: Every Orchid Offering

01 Aug 2016 // A review by Andrew Smit

This album is quite a stylish collection of sophisticated pop music that exudes into your ears and surprises you with its dreamy soundscapes and eclectic rhythms. Each song is subtly different with each possessing a unique and interesting diversion from the overplayed mainstream pop music of today. Every Orchid Offering has a distinctive sound, it’s not too experimental, but each track is intriguing and your curious as to where it will lead you.

Andrew Keogan’s dulcet tones are delivered in a very melodic Sinatra style, and his tender crooning attends to the varied cool grooves on the album perfectly. There are also 2 excellent duets with Chelsea Nikkel (Princess Chelsea) like the cool Stuck in Melodies which has a delicate slow groove and its gentle melody is bolstered with rich and unique harmonies with Chelsea, the other is the stark They Don’t Want a Boyfriend which delivers some inimitable vocal moans around an otherwise crisp vocal arrangement amongst its stomping rhythm. Like the song titles the lyrical content is interesting and engaging and thankfully Andrew's discerning vocal delivers a very audible narration in a very smooth melodious way.

There are some great 80’s funk beats and they deliver a much better sound to the so called contemporary R&B pop that you hear on mainstream radio today, the best of which are heard in the wonderful Queues at Dani Keys and No Simple Doll the latter being another duet, this one with Hollie Fullbrook (Tiny Ruins). Andrew occasionally dishes out some surprisingly high pitch frequencies that are like splashes of extra colour and expression, and it adds to the overall broad experience the songs on the album provide. I liked the track Won’t Let You Go with its sweet electric guitar and synth string sections that really made the track take flight.

Ending with the very dreamy Running your left feeling curious and yet content, overall the album is like that, you were given new sounds and new arrangements, and they were just different enough to provoke you, and most importantly entertain you.

 

About Andrew Keoghan

Andrew Keoghan fuses carefully arranged electronic, RnB and orchestral elements, with songs sometimes delicate and sparse, other times layered and orchestral.

His debut LP Arctic Tales Divide was released in 2011 in New Zealand, receiving a nomination for the Taite Prize (inspired by the British Mercury Prize) and named The New Zealand Herald’s Top Local Album of 2011.

His songs reflect a fascination with unconventional love and unexpected encounters.

Visit the muzic.net.nz Profile for Andrew Keoghan

Releases

Every Orchid Offering
Year: 2016
Type: Album
Arctic Tales Divide
Year: 2011
Type: Album

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