Music > Album Reviews

The Dowling Poole - [One] Hyde Park

19/04/16

Keen eyed readers might remember that The Dowling Poole’s debut Bleak Strategies was my album of 2014. Two years on and they are back with another corker of an album. 

From The Grip through Honeycrack, working with Ginger Wildheart, Jackdaw4 and composing for TV, Willie Dowling is one of our great, albeit sadly little known, songwriters. God Damn Whores frontman Jon Poole is probably best known for his work with The Cardiacs but has also worked with The Lotus Eaters and The Wildhearts. Together, they make The Dowling Poole. Based on sheer talent, they should rule the musical world.  

Like Bleak Strategies, [One] Hyde Park is bursting with high-energy, clever, literate, powerpoprock. This recalls ELO, Mott, Eno-era Roxy Music, Sparks and even early Queen but always in a good way. Talking of individual songs is a little pointless. This album works best as a whole, with every song being a multipart mini-symphony. In lesser hands, such an approach could produce a mess. There is no risk of that here as the song-writing is nothing less than superb. Likewise, the playing is exceptional throughout but never to the detriment to the songs. 

This is an intense, adrenalin blast of a rollercoaster ride of an album and I bloody love it.    

9.5/10