Fionn Regan - The Shadow of an Empire

News flash, Fionn - it's not 1964. Yeah, I know, can you believe it? You might want to sit down for this next one - you are not Bob Dylan. It's worth mentioning since you appear to be labouring under the illusion that repeatedly ripping off 'Subterranean Homesick Blues'-era Dylan over the course of this, your second album, is not just ok but somehow a valid artistic statement. Well, it isn't. It's just lazy, especially since you do the whole 'semi-rapping over one scratchily-played stretched out guitar chord' not once but twice, on 'Genocide Matinee' and 'House Detective'. On the former you even do a little reedy out-of-tune yodel, which I'm pretty sure Dylan copyrighted back in the early 60s. The lazily blown harmonica on 'Little Nancy' is also very redolent of Mr Zimmerman.

But the real problem, Fionn, isn't just that you've so slavishly ripped off a man who made his best music 40 years ago (yes, he did, Mojo readers!), it's not even that you've done absolutely nothing new with it - although that is quite annoying over the course of an entire album. It's more the air of self-satisfied smugness that pervades the whole exercise; the air of someone who's happy to know he's succeeded in repeatedly hammering the serotonin release button in the minds of heritage rock fans.

Richard Morris