Tom McShane

Fighter reviewed by The Devil Has The Best Tuna

Another review of Fighter is now online at the ace The Devil has the Best Tuna Blog:

BOXING CLEVER: Tom McShane
Genre: Indie / Alternative
From: Belfast, Northern Ireland United Kingdom

Tom Mcshane is a singer songwriter from Northern Ireland who takes you on a tour of his emotions with his heart firmly pinned to his sleeve. Like a mellow, melancholic David Ford or Will Oldham if he’d been brought up on the streets of Belfast instead of Kentucky Tom reaches right into your chest tugging at your heart and leaving you breathless. Such honesty is rare in a scene that emphasises style and fashion over passion and should be treasured by anyone with a passion for music.

Tom has recently released a single, ‘Fighter’, a lo-fi tale of a son following his boxing father into the ring. ‘Fighter’ was released as a split 7″ single with fellow Belfastians, the altogether more mainstream sounding indie pop trio Escape Act (of which more tomorrow).

If you’ve grown tired of run of the mill singer songwriters like David Gray then Tom McShane has arrived to restore your faith.

Thank you kindly, sir!

Tom

Fighter reviewed by Subba-cultcha.com

A brief but very kind review of Fighter appears in the single review section of Subba-cultcha.com; 

TOM MCSHANE - FIGHTER - PENNY DISTRIBUTION

Slow burning lament, touched with melancholy and exploding into falsetto when the emotion calls for it, a touching song from an artist with a pure soul…

Jeremy Chick, Subba-cultcha.com, July 2008

Thanks, Jeremy!

Tom 

Stendhal Festival 16th August

I’m pleased to announce that I’ll be performing at the Stendal Festival on Saturday 16th August along side the likes of Get Cape. Wear Cape. Fly., David Kitt and a host of others. For the full line-up check out www.stendhalfestival.com. 

Tom

Driving By Night Single Launch

I especially like the title!

Live at the Cathedral Quater Arts Festival… on NVTV

Two tracks from our stripped back performance at the AU Magazine show at the CQAF have been included in the NVTV broadcast of the concert. Also featured are the awesome And So I Watch You From Afar and, one of my personal absolute favourite new bands, the Benjamins. I blogged about it at the time and you can read that post here.

Tom

Hot Press Review

TOM MCSHANE

‘FIGHTER’ (Penny Distribution)

Spot of lo-fi alt country from Northern Ireland, anyone? Tom McShane channels the likes of Uncle Tupelo and Smog on this great track, which eloquently tells the story of a boxer’s inner conflict. Only deep martial drums resonate beneath McShane’s timeless voice for much of the track, with a simple but devastatingly effective little guitar lick cropping up every now and then too. An extremely promising taster.

Stephen Errity // Hot Press // Volume 32, Issue 13 // 16th July 2008

Thanks Stephen!

Fighter/God Says Out Today!

My new single, Fighter is released through Penny Distribution today on limited edition split seven inch vinyl along with God Says by Escape Act. You can pick up a copy of the vinyl today here or from the following stores:

Tower Records - Dublin
Road Records - Dublin
Freebird Records - Dublin
City Discs - Dublin
Plugd Records - Cork
Savin Music Centre - Limerick

Back Beat Records Belfast
Rough Trade - Talbot Road, London
Jumbo - St. Johns Centre, Leeds
Avalanche - Cockburn Street, Edinburgh
Sister Ray - Berwick Street, London
Rough Trade East - Brick Lane, London
Avalanche - Dundas Street, Glasgow
Reflex - Nun Street, Newcastle
Spillers - The Hayes, Cardiff

You can get a digital version of the single from Itunes, Rapsody and all good download sites.

I hope you enjoy!

Tom

Fighter on Simplemuzik Podcast

Russell David featured “Fighter” & “Promise Me” on his Simplemuzik Podcast Episode 095. This episode, entitled “The Good Fight” centres around the thematic common ground between “Fighter”, “Out of Tune Confessional” by Julius Caesar and the poetry of Rainer Maria Rilke. Please check out Russell’s Podcast.

Holly Golightly Support: Thursday 19th June!

I’m very pleased to announce that my band and I will be supporting the awesome Holly Golightly next Thursday evening at Auntie Annies Porter House in Belfast. I’m a big fan of Ms Golightly so this show will be a massive thrill for me. 

I literally cannot wait!

Tom

Free Downloads (Part Three of Three): Promise Me (ATL Acoustic Session)

Hi Folks, 

The third and final of the Fighter pre-release free download tracks is now available over on my myspace page. This week it’s an acoustic version of Promise Me recorded live in session from Across the Line on BBC Radio Ulster. As with the previous tracks, it will be available for one week only.

 It’s been brought to my attention that non-myspace users can’t download music from the site, if this applies to you, you can download the track from pennydistribution.com. 

I hope you’ve all enjoyed the tracks released in weeks one and two and I hope your appetites are whetted for the single release on 23^rd June. More exciting news on that to come.

 ‘Til then,  

Tom