Keiron Phelan & Peace Signs - Hullabaloo (2026) [Hi-Res]

An air of insouciance and tales of casual sophistry prevail in the gently louche marriage between Bell Records' pop powerhouse and Coney Island Baby era Lou Reed that is Keiron Phelan & Peace Signs fifth album, Hullabaloo. Good relationships turn bad, bad-game relationships prove fun, lies are told, and the truth does no one any favours.

The breathlessly sweet melodicism of 'Stripteaze Ya!' disguises a cautionary tale of everyday libertines emotionally out-bidding each other, bedecked in C&W style candy floss trimmings and the rhythmic vocal sway of 1975's Sailor, while 'Robinson Crusoe' is a bliss-to-sadness tale of youthful anorexic decline, tenderly paced out in fatalistically deadpan Kevin Ayers' baritone. The restrictive danger of over tight curls is highlighted by Adam Ant meets Mozart Estate barnstormer, 'Carmen Roller', wherein modern inhibition is obliquely critiqued by a time travelling hairdresser, until the shoulder shrugging arch-Louisms, hispanic piano and chiding chorus of title track 'Hullabaloo' portrays an unravelling, delusional, relationship. The early Jonathan Richman / Bubblegum meets Doobie Bros chugg of 'Swiss Army Knife' offres an extended Utopian life-fix metaphor of Mittel European fancy, replete with Elton refs, mass yodelling, and lyrical conceits reminiscent of hyper literate '90s cult band Balloon with Robert Forster style archness. Wrapped in a suite of soft soul backing vocals and Sly Stonesque electric piano and steel licks, a mood of cooly resigned decadence steals over proceedings in the Coney Island drenched, loose-relationship-unravelling, '70s Pornography', contrasted by the Ram style off-cut, Macca-Magritte tribute, wise-child's grab for happiness of 'Little Blue Sky'. Hullabaloo's most melancholic cut, 'When I Get To Where I'm Going', is a brief Dionne Warwick/Burt Bacharach rich unresolvable dark-dream, woken abruptly by the trippy jump band woodwind riffing and Alex Harvey in Paradise style declamatory word play of 'In Green Pasture'. The homeward path is trod in Peace Signs' sweetly languorous take on the traditional US children's game song 'Green Rocky Road', with chilled out shades of Karen Dalton.