Wax & Seal by Tadhg Cooke

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SOME REVIEWS

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Comparisons can be odious, but think Badly Drawn Boy crossed with Gallagher & Lyle, with a tincture of John Lennon tossed in for good measure, and permit yourself the wryest of smiles. Tadhg Cooke's solo debut crisscrosses so many terrains that your musical compass may quiver with the sheer magnetic challenge of Wax & Seal. It's the sleight of hand in his wordplay that charms. A computational linguist, Cooke gets his kicks by applying a distinctly poetic sensibility to the music: placing the right words in the right order. George's St Arcade is the stuff of magical maudlin bedsitland; Sparks is drawn from the same word well as Arthur Riordan's Improbable Frequency. Eminently likeable, utterly enviable.

"Wax & Seal" review - Siobhán Long, The Irish Times (The Ticket), 18th March 2005

So Saturday begins, again at The Olympia, this time with Tadhg Cooke. Cooke's voice immediately grabs you. Soft yet strong, it's got that Jeff Buckley quality to it that most vocalists crave. Given a fair wind, he could soon be looking to headline this venue next year.

HWCH Festival Review : Steve Cummins, Hot Press, Vol 29 No 18 21/09/2005

"his highly assured debut album "Wax & Seal" sounds as far removed from the beardy brigade of po-faced strummers as Pablo Aimar's deft touches are from the journeymen footballers of, say, West Brom. Thankfully, it's also a refreshingly cliché-free zone.

Take album standout "I Know You Hate Me", a post break-up song par excellence, where far from lamenting the loss of his one true love, our hero is rubbing her nose in the fact that he's moved on, with a chorus that most would-be troubadors would trade their broken hearts for: "I got a new love breaking me in / helps me forget about the way I've been".

Unlike many songwriters, Cooke can do happy as well as melancholy: the joyous "Live What You Feel" wangles free from the stranglehold of earnestness to soar into seriously celebratory airspace.

"Wax & Seal" is a confident, impressive debut that's best summed up by Cooke himself, on the gorgeous "Like A Stone": "I don't believe your stories / I can't believe your truths / But you're sweetly infectious / And it's hard to stay aloof".

"Wax & Seal" album review - John Walshe, HotPress, Vol 29, No 5, 23rd Mar 2005

"Cooke's unique brand of shimmering rock"

"Cooke does a neat line in understated emotive acoustic rock, and this EP is gilded with intimacy and introspection"

"success and acclaim is very much his for the taking. "

"George's St Arcade" single review - Tanya Sweeney, HotPress, Vol 29, No 2, 9th Feb 2005

The big discovery of the evening is the phenomenal songwriter Tadhg Cooke from Ireland... His dreamy songs that float between melancholy and wit are acoustic pop pearls with a breath's touch of jazz, sung with a velvet voice to a virtuoso guitar, indeed a small sensation!

TZ (TagesZeitung), Bayern, Germany - review of Heppel & Ettlich gig, Munich.

"Our favourite new singer/songwriter"

Miriam O'Callaghan, "Saturday Night with Miriam", RTE1 TV Chat Show, 13th Aug 2005.

Tadhg Cooke is thankfully a little different. The young Meathman's soft dreamy compositions are driven by lyrics that are consistently arresting and thought-provoking. And instead of being yet another dreary exercise in introspection, Wax & Seal is a vibrant album with a poetic sensibility and a keen eye for life's absurdities. There's more than enough fine songs on this impressive debut to suggest that he's got a big future ahead of him.

Album review - Andrew Lynch, Entertainment.ie

You can become engrossed in Tadhg Cooke's songs or simply listen to the low key, but refreshingly individual voice.

Badische Zeitung, Baden Würtenberg, Germany - Lukas Meyer Blankenburg

Wax & Seal fuses Van Morrison-esque syncopations (minus the ramblings thankfully) with poignant yet often-uplifting melodies instantly reminiscent of Paul Simon and John Martyn. But the album's 12 tracks represent 12 vastly different fusions : moving from the sexy swing of Roadmap to the funkier, dirtier sound of Monochrome.

DIT Independent - album review - Fiona Scally

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