PAUL BRADY : BACK TO CENTRE

1. Walk the White Line
2. Wheel of Heartbreak
3. Deep in Your Heart
4. To Be the One
5. Follow On
6. Soulbeat
7. Airwaves
8. The Island
9. The Homes of Donegal

Label : Mercury Records

Release Year : 1986

Length : 47:53

Review (Wikipedia) : Back to the Centre is a 1985 album by Irish singer/songwriter Paul Brady, his fourth solo album. Eric Clapton was a guest guitarist.

Review (Amazon) : Paul Brady's wonderfully energetic song 'Walk the White Line' was a big hit in Ireland twenty years ago (was used in at least one TV ad), and when I was a kid I used to love hearing it on the radio. Twenty years later I got around to buying this album (just this week) and it's a great reminder of just how talented Brady is. Although now and again there is the distracting twang of an instrument which gives away the decade the album was recorded in, this is real quality. When I say that I've always thought of Brady as being the closest Ireland has to a Billy Joel, I mean the Billy Joel of "Piano Man" and "Goodnight Saigon". Best songs: "Walk the White Line" - fast-paced, lively; evoking late nights and longing. "Soulbeat" - a wonderfully beaty tune. "The Island" - an anti-war song that mentions Lebanon (the invasion took place a few years before the album's release) and alludes to the Troubles in Brady's native Northern Ireland. "The Homes of Donegal" - easily the most evocative song on the album. Like The Waterboy's arrangement of Yeats's poem "The Stolen Child", this too sets the verse of an Irishman (Sean McBride) to music. The effect is one of pastoral splendour.