TOM MORIARTY - FIRE IN THE DOLL'S HOUSE
(Driftwood Records)

Tom Moriarty is a former banker turned heartfelt singer-songwriter, and while it would be overly harsh to suggest that he should’ve stuck with the day job - I'm sure he's not in it for the money - it’s hard to imagine that his music career is going to rake in the vast profit that City parasites earn while laughing maniacally as the world burns (or so I read).

Opening up with the title track (probably the best track on the album), this is inoffensively bland stuff, sitting somewhere in the middle of all those MOR dullards like James Blunt and… hell, I don’t know the names of these people. Admittedly, Moriarty has a gruffer, more lived-in voice, but for all the predictably heartfelt lyrics, he rarely seems to register any actual emotion – it all seems like some pub singer going through the motions, and while he’s perfectly acceptable on that level, I can’t honestly say that this offers anything new or inspired. Instead, it reminds me of too many thirty / forty-somethings taking a last gasp at rock ‘n’ roll stardom with a self-financed album (during my brief time working in the music industry, I encountered several of them).

On the basis of this, I fear Moriarty’s dreams of rock 'n' roll stardom will go unfulfilled.

DAVID FLINT

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