For Those I Love - For Those I Love review | Alexis Petridis's album of the week

The Guardian 0

(September Recordings)
A eulogy for a dead friend, David Balfe’s stirring debut combines lyrics on class, death and despair with clubland highs and hope

All first albums come with some kind of backstory, but the backstory of the eponymous debut by For Those I Love – the pseudonym of Dublin-based songwriter/producer/vocalist David Balfe – is more harrowing than most. Recording was under way when Paul Curran, his best friend and fellow member of Burnt Out – an artistically ambitious punk collective who attracted attention in Ireland for their visceral depiction of youth in the working-class Dublin suburb of Coolock – killed himself. The opening track, I Have a Love, breaks the fourth wall to striking effect, three-and-a-half minutes in: “A year or so ago, I played this song for you on the car stereo in the night’s breeze / This bit kicked in with its synths and its keys / And you smiled as you sat next to me.”