Album Review: Crybaby by Crybaby

You can mark out the emotional territory occupied by Crybaby by listening to the song from which Danny Coughlan took the name for this terrific album. Cry Baby by Garnet Mimms and the Enchanters is one of those overwrought early-60s ballads in which romantic disappointment is a world unto itself, and so it is with Crybaby. Coughlan's rich, brooding baritone and eye for everyday detail – "We trace her steps across linoleum in kitten heels," he sings on When the Lights Go Out – bring Morrissey into the mix, and musically, too, the debt to the Smiths is inescapable: this is kitchen-sink romance for guitar, bass and drums.

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Although there's been a shortage of songs tackling the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, the debut album from Danny Coughlan, alias Crybaby, contains a cracker. "Veils" is a elegy for the entire sorry escapade, evoking not just sympathy for the individual soldier but something of the sweep of history when talking of banging the drum, "for Helmand and for Passchendaele". The rest of the album is almost as great, but concerns itself with heartbreak of the romantic kind, in a style that draws on the weepy croon of Roy Orbison and the DIY majesty of 60s producer Joe Meek with panache.

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