(Muso's Guide, February 13, 2009)
Single review
With all the evasion skills of Dr. Richard Kimble, Eugene McGuinness refuses to be defined by where he’s from, and will not be pinned down on what sort of music he concocts. And that doesn’t give a music fan much to work with, but here goes.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, ‘Fonz’ is a slightly schizophrenic song. It makes a basis of the sort of twangy garage rock guitar that found its feet post-Britpop with American bands like The Strokes, but with a very very British feel.
The staccato rhythm of percussion keeps the song chugging along nicely, with an upbeat angle and plenty to recommend it to any indie disco dancefloor, sounding not unlike punks like Television.
Former wunderkind McGuinness makes a virtue of his curiously almost atonal singing - he has the vocal range of Morrissey circa Meat Is Murder, but paying a far greater attention than that singer to what his voice is doing compared to the music which surrounds it.
Lyrically, McGuinness is knowing and deft - such couplets as “Things aren’t so glossy/Without a posse” and the excellent “And so we synchronised our watches/And arranged for the meeting of our crotches” lift the song well above the ordinary - and he slots words neatly into every nook and cranny of this short, sharp shock of a tune, again not unlike Morrissey back in the day.
Calling to mind a stuttering soloist like Jack Peñate, McGuinness’ grasp of the straightforward pop hit is unerring, the song, at a mere two minutes 23 seconds, not risking a second of its welcome overstayed.
The video has a nice line in artschool chich, with the self-conscious moptop singer stop-motioning around the set along with other band members who, on occasion, disappear through solid walls and appear to do a variety of speedy instrument changes throughout.
A neat, sharp song from a seriously talented singer/songwriter - he may attempt to avoid pigeonholing, but Eugene McGuinness can be firmly filed under ‘quality’.
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