Picture This review: capturing a Kildare kind of life

The surprising success of Kildare’s Picture This (aka Ryan Hennessy and Jimmy Rainsford) is incomprehensible to many; it’s likely the same people sneer at the band for not being St Vincent, Grizzly Bear or LCD Soundsystem.

Obeying Noël Coward’s famous quote (“It’s extraordinary how potent cheap music is”), this debut album ticks all the requisite boxes for the lads’ predominantly teenage fanbase. Its appeal lays in a sequence of remarkably melodic arrangements (courtesy of tunesmith Rainsford) entwined with authentic small-town vignettes (by wordsmith Hennessy), which connect – and not just with their target audience.

For a band so fresh to capture the crux and sensibility of this is instructive. And if there has been a more compactly written song this year about conflicted teenage emotions than Smells Like Him, we haven’t heard it. picturethismusic.com