Max Greenwood, pianist in successful softie singer-songwriter Tom Baxter’s band, strikes me immediately as the type of musician I usually avoid. Jazzy, but not jazz, folky, but not folk, and poppy without being pop, In The Blood is most likely to receive airplay on RTE Radio 1, and sit comfortably in a section of Tower Records I usually pass by without a second glance. Lead single Made-Up Hotel does very little to make me want to change my record shop perambulation route. Twinkling by with a gentle pop lilt, it is the perfect excuse to use the advisably avoided adjective nice. Not the most appropriate bait, to lure the unsuspecting into the album’s snare then.
Surprisingly, though, In The Blood has a good deal more than it’s opening salvo belies. In Frozen Still, Greenwood has a more personality-filled affair to offer. With a driving beat and a magnetic chorus, it proffers an important factor Made-Up Hotel is missing: a tangible purpose. For an album that has the air of a hobby from his day-job under the boss Mr. Baxter, Greenwood’s songwriting still has an urgency that helps the album’s best tracks come alive, helped in heaps by his notable proficiency on piano, a more-than-passable voice and some essentially lifting drum beats. One of such important percussion moments comes on Special, albeit in a song that is far too short for it’s own good. The somewhat Paul Brady-evoking song title The Long Goodbye hides the track with the most ideas, with the album’s most inspired note-twinkling playing over a brilliantly bouncy backdrop.
The album, then, is more than ‘nice’ for the main part (though there are some criminally genteel moments). Greenwood’s first foray into solo songwriting may not be an ostensibly important one, but don’t for a second think it any less than substantial.
