The Invitation to the Voyage Domino***

There's a nice swagger about English/Irish songwriter Eugene McGuinness; in the past five years or so he has presented us with albums full of ideas, some barely formed (his 2007 debut EP, The Early Learnings of Eugene McGuinness, admits as much), yet with the nerve to bounce clever notions off of our heads. The Invitation to the Voyage sees the Londoner (who studied at the Liverpool Institute for Performing Arts, co-founded by Paul McCartney) build upon his early promise. And so we have some cracking pop songs (Shotgun, Japanese Cars, Sugarplum, Videogame, Invitation to the Voyage) with reference points as solid as Orange Juice and Morrissey. If there's a problem, it's the ring of over-familiarity about most of the music; McGuinness just needs to tweak here and there, and he'll surely be a borderline genius. eugenemcguinness.net

Download tracks:Sugarplum, Shotgun, Invitation to the Voyage