Dermot Kennedy - Without Fear review

The Guardian 60

(Riggins/Island)
The Irish troubadour adds electronic and hip-hop elements – if that sounds familiar, he certainly wears his heart on his sleeve

It would be easy to lump Dermot Kennedy in with the glut of post-Ed Sheeran everybloke white male singer-songwriters clogging up the chart. Like Sheeran, the fast-rising Irish 27-year-old is an acoustic troubadour with electronic/hip-hop beats, and has already clocked up over 300 million streams. And yet, there’s more to the man from the Irish village of Rathcoole, whose soulful Irish Rod Stewart rasp was honed busking on Dublin’s Grafton Street when he was 16, and who flits from slightly trite, big-lunged love songs to darker musings on burglary and alcoholism.