Some artists claim they became musicians to get chicks, or to get rich and famous, or because they were lousy at sports.
But Fionn Regan? He says, without hesitation, in a devilishly sexy brogue: “You make a pact with something invisible. After that you can trip and fall into a river, or you can follow a lot of crayon maps drawn by demented people, but you still have to do it, because you’d suffer if you didn’t.”
This is how the guy talks, I swear. Call it the proverbial Irish gift of gab or whatever, but metaphor is clearly Fionn Regan’s stock in trade. And I'm drinking it all in, loving this interview. Everything he says is so quotable, I can't write fast enough.
He calls his debut CD, The End of History, a “slideshow of memory;” he says recording it was like “building an ocean liner with a butter knife” or “hitting piggy banks with hammers to try to get enough shrapnel to piece together.” With a giggle, he describes life on the road (which he’s done a lot of lately) as “being in a submarine.” As for performing his songs live, he notes that “the stage can be the microscope or it can be the frying pan.”
Ah, but it would be a crying shame to ask him to put it in plainer language. That prodigious flow of imagery is what makes this mop-haired troubador’s songwriting so astonishingly assured. Sure, Regan’s got an ethereal indie tenor, a knack for understated arrangements, and truly impressive finger picking on the acoustic guitar – but what really makes him stand out from the crowd of earnest young Brits (James Blunt, James Morrison, yadda yadda yadda) is the quality of his lyrics.
His fellow Irishman Damien Rice is the only contemporary who even comes close — you’d have to reach much further back in musical history for comparable talent, back to folkie poets like Donovan or John Martyn or Nick Drake.
Let me just throw out a few evocative lines from his songs for your consideration: “I have become / An aerial view / Of a coastal town / That you once knew” (from “Be Good Or Be Gone”); “The springs in the mattress / Will never reveal / How I entered / In a hospital ward / Across a billboard” (from “Hey Rabbit”); “Wait your turn / You always go for the jugular / Like a juggernaut / Spinning off the asphalt” (from “Bunker or Basement”). The sprightly, whimsical “Put a Penny in the Slot” spins a web of so many images and literary allusions, it really is like watching the perky antics of an old-fashioned arcade game. (Jeez, now I'm catching this metaphor thing from him.)
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