Reviews for 'Year of the Husband'

Drop-d.ie
The Dudley Corporation have been quite a surprise for me. I remember hearing about them years ago from some magazine only to more or less forget about them. Now I've read the press release and find out that they not only have not been keeping quiet in the meantime but have released 3 albums, one of which was ranked 56th in Hotpress's listing of the best Irish LPs of all time and 9th in Alternative Irelands best LPs of the year, and that includes international acts. So, after defying sophomore syndrome and creating an incredible second album, could it be the Corpo have been putting off the decline in quality that plagues many bands who have released a great album? Exactly the opposite. "Year of the Husband", their third effort, has taken over half of the band's eight year life to create and it shows. Rooted somewhere between post-rock and pop-rock this album has had effort and love pumped into every song. From the outset this album has melodies that will slowly seep into your head and take root.

Album opener "The Lens Begins" sets the scene for things to come, and neither it nor this album feels ordinary or banal at any time. Despite this song being a fairly straightforward pop-rock number, the subtleties and tight musicianship stand out. "We Angled Our Shadows and Cast Them In Stone" is where comparisons with the Redneck Manifesto and bands like This Town Needs Guns first come out. The beautiful chorus melody is completely hummable. The album is about a 50/50 split between upbeat songs and slower numbers, but even individual songs have dichotomies. The first half of "Step-out" motors along and contains mesmerising vocals from Carol Keogh of the Tycho Brahe and Autamata whereas the second half is purely piano accompanying Dudley"s vocals. Haunting vocal melodies are to be found in "Last Day on Earth" there's a heavier tune in "Holy Wars" whereas album standout "Leave a Last Kiss" starts off with a fast swing beat and ends with an epic riff guaranteed to hold your attention. The closing triumvirate are some of the slowest songs on the album but are by no means weak, the atmospherics of "Don"t Give Up, Stupid" are filled by violins, guitar and vocals.

The only possible complaint with "Year of the Husband" is that the production can be a little on the rough side at times. Still, this criticism is picking at straws - the songwriting is consistently strong - the music itself is almost flawless, and what's even more important is the songs flow well as an album. The trio are all great musicians, and because the dynamics of the album change a lot, you won't be bored - there are ups and downs - and some changes within songs that'll surprise you. As mentioned in other reviews, The Dudley Corporation have a solid grasp on the dynamics of balancing quiet and loud parts. If this album doesn"t work for you at first, take the advice of album closer "Don"t Give Up..." and give it another spin, once the melodies sink in you won't want to put this down.
- Dave Sheehan

bronderland.de
Ireland! The green island, symbolised by sumptuous pastures and countless sheep. Then contrast the cliffs, beaches and a restless sea. These contrasts also crop up in the music of The Dudley Corporation. They glide from folky songs like a slow tide to post rock and pop. A perceptible sense of eccentricity in each song holds the whole thing together. The light and sloping vocals, time changes, the deft underplaying, the theatrical treatment that can become an almost destructive melody. It can get loud, then whisper tenderly in your ear. The leaders of The Dudley corporation Mark, Joss and Dudley, never flinch. And in Year of the Husband they have created a marvelously pleasant and varied album. Without fretting about sales figures they have written outstanding songs within different styles, yet it still gels. Stormy and raucous on The Lens Begin , dynamic and powerful post rock on Holy Wars, magnificent pop on „Step Out, " or tender ballads like Fool and Last Day on Earth. There is something here for almost everyone, but the album doesn't seem fragmented. The Dudley Corporation have bound this mix of styles so that each song runs smoothly into the next.
File "Year of the Husband next to The Wedding Present and Pinback. Remember the name: The Dudley Corporation. If you're looking off the beaten indie track, you need to hear them. 10/12
- Thomas Stein

Westzeit
Playful, smart, rich in variety and ideas, this is a big and downright entertaining delight from this Dublin trio! They combine and contrast in tiny spaces, pull away solo, but always keep each other within view. Then, with a judiciously placed rhythm change, they hit the next hook, constantly presenting the listener with a new challenge. They can get quiet and contemplative too, and have the ability to let a song develop unhindered. This is really good, timeless and intelligent (post?) rock. *****
- Marco Pawert

Motor.de
The Dudley Corporation have released an ambitious album in Year of the Husband. These loud-quiet experts from Dublin combine precision post-rock with slow folky ballads.
What The Dudley Corporation have created in Year of the Husband could arguably be called Anti-Pop, since the band seek to eschew all classic structures. With unconventional sequencing, they have refused to conform, providing the listener with a sequence of enjoyable surprises.
This is immediately noticeable with the first track, The Lens Begin. Constructed from disparate parts, the tone swiftly swaps between loud and quiet, with Dudley's gentle voice striking throughout. This contrast is noticeable throughout the band's work, continually straying from the norm. In contrast to the visceral post-rock sounds, more than half of the pieces are low-tempo (like Fool) with simple accordion and melodic vocals. One gets the impression here and there that it couldn't get any quieter.
The digital sample Step-Out stands out, with the help of guest vocals from Carol Keogh (Automata), as the most straightforward track on the record. For the rest, 'pop' is blown away by complicated arrangements or twinkles occasionally in the ballads.
In this way, the LP slowly reaches it's high-point with the formidable Leave A Last Kiss, and is quiet thereafter. On this track, the Irishmen dazzle with crisp riffs and breaks and with precision tightness. The drums give an extraordinary push with a drum'n'bass beat, bass and guitar play a fast lick in unison. With their controlled, clear lines, nothing is excessive or superfluous.
The Dudley Corporation have made a meticulously produced album that, with a mixture of precision-groove postrock and guitar ballads, is entirely unpretentious, but is impressive, poignant and thrilling.
- Stephan Klingebiel

Roteraupe.de
The Dudley Corporation have made one of the best indie-pop albums of the year! At first 'Year of the Husband' is reminiscent of The Shins. Light-footed indie-pop that seems simple, but is multi-layered, consistently providing euphoric highlights.
Even the first song, the impressive 'The Lens Begin', shows how good this album is. The Dudley Corporation play happy, light and propulsive music with a nice quiet-loud dynamic and a great singer, akin to Blake Sennett from Rilo Kiley and The Elected. A good song through and through, full of good ideas, impressively stormy urgency, and embedded with low-key harmonies.
Moving on, the next song starts quietly but then builds a little. However, it remains intimate and wonderfully quiet, retaining subtlety and reserve, again with the ever-present urgency in the background.
In the third song, this diffused bustle disappears, leaving a sad and wonderful ballad, almost like a lullaby - one of the best-ever lullabies of recent times! These two songs rely mostly on the singer's voice, but also an occasional folk influence emerges, an echo of Rilo Kiley (the glorious era of 'The Execution of All Things' rather than the tired stuff they make these days).
Right after these great, quiet tunes, they go seamlessly into an up-tempo song that suddenly breaks the mood, but still fits well. Actually, this happens a lot over the course of the album: quiet songs are replaced by wild and stormy ones, then a short melancholy passage with minor-key piano, which is then followed by something different. What's great about this is that none of the changes are irritating. The variety all fits perfectly together. Phenomenal!
Right up to the final song, the comparatively consoling and uplifting "Don't Give Up, Stupid" there are more and more big or small moments when you can hear something unique. Almost always, with the addition of the simple beauty of the songs, this amounts to something even better, making 'Year of the Husband' an album that's good to listen to again and again.

Revolver Club
What sort of band takes the title of "56th best Irish LP of all time" for their previous album, have shared stages with Low, Pinback, Trail of Dead and Stephen Malkmus, and have had collaborators from Delgados and Camera Obscura, yet I've never heard of them? It's a quiet band that can be damn loud, and vice versa. They take you by surprise with the art of stop-and-start, loud and quiet, perfected and combined with Dudley's voice that flickers from melancholy to madness with perfect pop instrumentation. Strings included.
Their travels around the world and multiple marriages haven't dimmed their creativity, when it's usually quite the opposite. On this, their third LP, Pinback's Kenseth Thibideaux and Waiting Room's Nigel Farrely lend a hand. Only the vocal assistance from Carol Keogh (previously from The Tycho Brahe, now singer with Autamata) really bothered me, but whenever tempo and songwriting hits top form, these three Dubliners are listenable and lovable. Perhaps better second time round than the first, but isn't that the way with most things?
Reminiscent of: Spearmint, Badly Drawn Boy, Tea with a chaser.
- Kat

Irish Times
Where the hell have The Dudley Corporation been? Getting married, playing gigs and losing small fortunes, apparently. Two years in the making and another two before release, the third album from this fine Dublin three-piece has all the ingredients of their previous records: ultra-tight playing, stop-start dynamics, and a careful ear for melody. Guest appearances from Carol Keogh and Nigel Farrelly (of the recently retired Waiting Room) bring another dimension to their sound. Recorded intermittently in the US, France and Ireland, Year of the Husband is slightly more restrained than what we're used to, but take that as a sign of their increased maturity as songwriters. One listen to The Lens Begin or Step-Out and you'll realise it's time to fall in love with The Dudleys all over again. 4/5
- Brian Keane

RTE Guide
This third album from Dublin art rockers, The Dudley Corporation, may have been four years in the making but the trio haven't been waiting for the greatness to come calling. Recorded in Belfast and France, the credit list reads like a who's who of the Irish and Yank alternative intelligentsia and like kindred spirits The Redneck Manifesto, the Dudleys shift obliquely from serene guitar passages to lacerating attack and from folky melancholia to urban panic attack. Frantic-sounding guitars interlock on Leave a Last Kiss, the blissfully mournful Last Day on Earth features gorgeous guest vocals from the ubiquitous Carol Keogh, and a flute sneaks in epic closer Don't Give Up, Stupid. Dudley Colley's vocals twitch with paranoia and while it's clear DC are clever swine, the chin on chest self-indulgence can become wearing. This a hard album to love but there's a lot to like in The Dudley Corporation's nervy worldview. 4/5

Cluas
The more sentimental indie fans among you may find it charming that The Dudley Corporation story has gone from "The Lonely World Of…" to "In Love With…" and has now reached marriage. "Year Of The Husband" is named for the fact that the three Corpo members (Dudley, Joss and Mark) all got married during the making of this album.
Not that it's a slushfest of marital bliss, but "Year Of The Husband" certainly has a romantic tint to it, with plenty of lovelorn lyrics and sweet arrangements. However, the album's frequent tempo changes, post-rock blurriness and shifts from quiet to loud will remind most listeners of serious, unromantic Radiohead. This is most clear in the prog-experimental "Leave A Last Kiss" and "We Angled Our Shadows And Cast Them in Stone".
Guests on this album include Nigel Farrelly of The Waiting Room and Carol Keogh of Automata and The Tycho Brahe/Tychonaut, and Keogh contributes significantly to the record's standout track, "Step-Out". The contrast between her clear, distinctive voice and Dudley Colley's indie slurring gives this rock-out a solid structure that's lacking in the more impressionistic tracks elsewhere on the album.
Indeed, the quality of this record increases significantly when The Dudley Corporation drop the abstract noodling and deliver more focused material. A simple song like "Vapour Trails" suddenly takes off with a shimmering slide guitar lick that captures the restless escapism of the title and lyrics.
Having opened with the uptempo alt-rock chugging of "The Lens Begins", the album closes in a much quieter setting. Another reference point for this record is the U.S. slowcore of Low, and the two closing tracks, "Aliens" and "Don't Give Up, Stupid", are slices of melancholic Americana that are much more satisfying than the band's Radiohead-isms.
So, while this album features a good handful of quality alt-rock tunes, there's a nagging sense that its more experimental stretches are just filler. You'll like "Year Of The Husband", but it's best just to stay friends with it. 7/10
- Aidan Curran

Metro
Cleary not a band that believes in doing things in a hurry, it's been almost five years since Dublin crew The Dudley Corporation released their last album. It's been time well spent: full of sly folk numbers, post-rock and wittily deconstructed takes on indie icons, Year of the Husband is a record of endless charms and considerable songwriting chops. Granted, the rudimentary production values can be a little off-putting - much of the album sounds as if it was assembled in a flat with leaky taps. But this doesn't diminish the sweet lilt of songs such as Leave a Last Kiss, Fool or Step-Out, featuring fallen-angel vocals from Autamata's Carol Keogh. 4/5
- Eamon de Paor

Clare People
If you thought five years in the recording wilderness might have dulled the cutting edge of Dublin three-piece The Dudley Corporation then you're very much mistaken. True, the Dudley boys have a lot more life under their belts since In Love With The Dudley Corporation way back in '03, but whatever dark corner of the world they've been calling home throughout the mid-90's(sic), they have clearly stayed right on top of the music.
In short, Year of the Husband is bang on the money. At times almost feverous, tracks like 'The Lens Begin' and 'Step Out' take the best from über-hooky, summer time pop and lace it heavily with black veins of darkness. The result - instantly catchy music with hear. Not an easy thing to achieve. But wait there's more - tracks like 'Fool', 'Last Day on Earth' and 'Aliens...' show the bands undoubted pedigree for something a little slower and more considered. This is a stunning comeback - destined to make somebody somewhere really happy. 9/10
- Andy Hamilton

Hot Press
An album that's been over four years in the making, The Dudley Corporation's third LP could, like so many other protracted enterprises, have been either an exercise in self-indulgence, or just a haphazard, unfocused muddle. The fact that the Dublin-based trio recorded it in nine different locations around the globe - ranging from frontman Dudley Colley's front-room, to Fugazi's base in Washington, D..c - was also a risky endeavour. Just a single run-through of Year of the Husband allays any misgivings however, this is a cohesive, accomplished album, and a satisyfing follow-up to it's predecessor In Love With The Dudley Corporation.
As songwriter-in-chief, Colley's ear for inventive song construction is striking, opener 'The Lens Begin' for example, launches with a driving-alt-rock pulse that soon gives way to a nifty shift in tempo and melody, while 'Step-Out', featuring Carol Keogh from Autamata, plunders a line quirky, melancholic indie that twists itself into a snarling implosion of drums and guitar. The influence of Kenseth Thibideaux of US indie-rockers Pinback (who guests here), is palpable too; many of these tracks are quiet epics that build to thrilling climaxes ('Leave a Last Kiss' is a particular highlight) in the Pinback vein.
It'd be misleading to heap acclaim on any one contributor, though; this is undoubtedly a Dudley Corporation endeavour through-and-through, consequently proving the old adage that absence does indeed make the heart grow fonder. A convincing and rewarding return.
- Lauren Murphy

State
The Dudley Corporation's long-awaited third album is a seamless blend of understated beauty and frenzied rock that works very well. Whether they are packing a song like 'Holy Wars' with frenetic drumming and mischevious melodies, or sleepily casting a sad eye at a doomed relationship as on 'Fool' - the album's standout - they sound like a band at the top of their game.
There are moments here where everything sounds truly electic. Driving riffs and squalling feedback are combined to great effect on the album's heavier moments, which for all their seriousness, sit well next to the more laidback tracks, and get undoubtedly better with repeated listens.
For the first half of the record, it's as if the songs are hidden inside a mesh of nifty rhythm changes, punchy guitars, and glorious distortion, slow to reveal themselves or attach themselves to memory. The later tracks here ar much more immediate in their effect, as things get quieter, less intricate and more honest.
'Vapour Trails' starts by placing singer Dudley Colley's moody vocals at the centre of attention, supported by a simple acoustic chord change and some starry slide guitar, while 'Aliens' brings to mind the Low comparisons fans of the band will be familiar with. For all the noise and variety on show on this album, it's the band's sense of song that makes it a triumph. A fine record that improves with repeated listens. 4/5
- Shane Culloty

Irish Independent
For a band whose acclaimed previous albums have been recorded and released with the sort of breakneck speed that the White Sripes approach their art, the Dubliner's third album has taken almost an eternity to see the light of day.
While the production might not be as crisp as it could be, the trio's desire to innovate is rarely far off the mark. There's a virtousity to a clutch of songs that's commendable and the arrangements suggest a band keen to plough their own furrow. The Lens Begin is especially smart, already one of this writer's favourite songs by an Irish act this year.
DC have enlisted some outside help, and it's a clever move. Carol Keogh, formerly of The Tycho Brahe and latterly the female vocalist of choice for Autamata, pops up regularly as does Nigel Farrelly, singer who made small ripples with the band, Waiting Room - and both put in a good shift.