“There is something old to Eric’s sound but that does not mean that is outdated or that it has no place in the music of today. Listening to Eric’s recordings is an experience that everyone should get to share…”
It was over a year ago that we first featured Eric McGrath here on the Arcade, after stumbling across some videos of his performances, we’d been stuck on his music for ages and we were lucky to be treated to a small sampling of his work he later sent us. At the time, Eric had no album but had every intention of turning his passion to compiling something big and today we’re pleased to be bringing you a review his debut album, ‘Little Ripples’.
Eric, is a singer/songwriter hailing from Dublin, after completing a degree in Chemistry, he came to the realisation that he wanted to work in music and pursued a Masters and his passion for creating beautiful sounds and so here is today with an album under his belt.
In the year or so since we first heard Eric, our first impressions of the album is that very little has changed, his music still has that air of experience surrounding it, it’s very easy to listen and lose yourself to it, with effortless blending between tracks that drift peacefully from one to another. It wasn’t until our second listen of the album did we begin to pick up on the differences, we’re not talking in terms of sound quality, the album is professionally recorded with zero faults on that end, but the differences are in the tones Eric uses, the emotion in some the songs on the album are conveyed much better and we get the feeling that the year has been of great benefit to Erics skills.
The album opens with ‘Let’s Get Curious’, which when compared to the rest of the album sounds so different, it has a different energy, while still maintaining an easy-listening vibe, there is an air of excitement to it that gets you ready for the whole album. It also sets a consistent theme for the album, that of love, which isn’t exactly something new but (and we could be entirely wrong here) the songs seem to be a timeline of a love and perhaps ‘Let’s Get Curious’ with it’s faster pace and upbeat tempo is a symbol of the initial rush of excitement a new relationship brings. As the album slows down with tracks like ‘A Lost Romance’ ‘And Here’s Me Thinking’, it is easy (for us anyway!) to draw conclusions of a relationship slowing down before finally coming to an end.
Before we tackle our favourite tracks on the album it’s probably best to look at the one song that we can’t really get around, ‘Ripples into Waves’ sticks out for us purely because it feels like it doesn’t fit with the rest of the album. It has great rhythm but for us it doesn’t seem like it belongs here, breaking the motif can be a refreshing breather from the album but with it being track 2, it comes a little too early for us. Don’t get us wrong, it doesn’t sound bad, it would just serve better as a later track, in our original piece we were marvelled by it’s infectious sound but here it is too sharp a break.
Now on with the gems, and they are everywhere on this album but we’ll pick two, something new and something old.
‘A Lost Romance’ stood out for us when we first heard Eric, and now with a professional sound polish, it comes across as one of the strongest tracks on the album. It is also the first track where evidence of the growth in Eric’s talent becomes clear, hardly the happiest song on the album, Eric manages to carry the melancholy right through the song without drowning our experience in depression and dragging us down. This ability carries on through the album, with the same delicate handling applied to tracks like ‘Alone We Stand’.
Photo – Larry McMahon
‘Alluring Lady’ does the job ‘Ripples Into Waves’ should have done, it breaks from the heaviness, a song that skips methodically and happily from beat to beat, note to note, lyric to lyric. A lighter side to the album and you will catch yourself smiling and reliving your own experiences of that one person who you find yourself losing control of your senses for.
“…it is the perfect sound to while away lazy days in the evening, to lose yourself in and to even do some soul searching with.”
We stand by what we said above in our first article about Eric, ‘Little Ripples’ fits comfortably into our music collection and if you’re searching for something, intelligent, beautiful and easy to listen to, well you’ve found it here today! This album is for everyone, the broken hearted, the dreamers, for lazy days, for perfect Irish summers, for long miserable rainy days, ‘Little Ripples’ is something you should own.
Track Listing for ‘Little Ripples’
1. Let’s Get Curious
2. Ripples Into Waves
3. A Lost Romance
4. Abuelo
5. Alone We Stand
6. These Are The Good Old Days
7. Alluring Lady
8. And Here’s Me Thinking
9. Carousel
10. Before You Left
11. Sixty Seconds
You can pre-order Eric’s album from his official website here!
To keep up with Eric, you can follow him on his official YouTube, Twitter and Facebook by clicking the links.
Eric is launching ‘Little Ripples’ in the Sugar Club, Dublin, 8pm, June 21st. No admission charge!
Editor-in-Chief, part-time super villain and hoarder of cats. If you can’t find me writing, I’m probably in the kitchen!
