Fionn Regan - Protection racket

Protection Racket is the opening track from Irish singer-songwriter Fionn Regan's forthcoming album The Shadow of an Empire, due out next year. Notes supplied by the record company describe it as follows. "If The End of History, his previous album, was the sound of the countryside and woodland lanes, the forthcoming one is the sound of towns and dimly lit streets. "It was during a period of great global upheaval, while touring his debut album for two years worldwide - and in particular across America - that he began work on its follow-up. It seems natural that his response was to become more outward-looking. As a writer you hold up a mirror, its reflections become the work, and in The Shadow of an Empire this manifests itself in a collection of songs that are peopled with characters and conversational dialogue. "Protection Racket is the first in this series of conversational songs

(Be quiet Katie / There is someone at the hatch / You curse the darkness while I strike a match / Un-doing the latch I tripped on the scales and fell / Just as someone hit the reception bell), but there is ambiguity to the comical drama played out over its jaunty backbeat. Listen again, and it could be a musing on the current times: "Leaders of nations / Wild Alsatians / Crumbling foundations / I've lost my patience / These big companies are giving us the squeeze / Lets raise our glasses to Mr Onassis).