Introducing - White Collar Boy

It's a great feeling to stumble upon something new that is both fully formed and genuinely interesting...and it's also an added bonus when they're Irish.
Yesterday evening, Kid Karate (follow them here - sound chaps) piqued my interest with a tweet about their friend who had just posted up recordings - a mysterious young man named Gavin White, who goes under the guise of White Collar Boy. These sort of tip offs don't always auger well but I was quickly won over.

Howl Again is six minutes of sprawling, stratified splendour, which glides along perfectly amid a winding guitar riff and wonderfully unpolished vocals. Despite it's length it never threatens to drift away, instead it changes pace at all the right moments, and amid these carefully stacked elements is the realisation that WCB possesses a certain knack for arrangement far beyond his humble status.



This Is (All Night) [Parts 1 and 2] is a more tranquil but equally compelling affair, as soft tones of discontent gradually give way to a warped vocal and tripped out beat. The insatiably catchy riff in The Return of the Hollow Eyed Saint and the accompanied low-key vocals could have been plucked straight from the creative mind of a certain David Kitt, while the more progressive, synth-driven maze of Another Way completes the quartet in explorative fashion.

A Dublin based multi-instrumentalist, very much in the mould of Kittser and Richie Egan, White Collar Boy is an exciting proposition. These tracks indicate that he bears all the necessary hallmarks to compete with the aforementioned trendsetters and it's been a while since I've been so taken by an artist I know so little about.

In fact, very little else is known of White Collar Boy at all...heck, even the accompanied picture is mysterious! Never the less, you can expect our caped crusader to emerge from the shadows pretty soon, these songs are simply too good for anything else.

Have a listen for yourself below and download some of the tracks on offer for free.

The Abbey Actor by White Collar Boy