Fionn Regan has had a busy 2007... With the re-release of The End of History in the US, the Mercury Prize nomination and fall shows - the hard work isn't going unnoticed -- check out these new applauds:

No Depression / Rolling Stone / Harp / Blackbook / E! / Reuters / The Sun / Boston Globe / Boston Phoenix / SXSW World Magazine

As always, stay tuned for additional reviews, tour dates and news.

Critically acclaimed Irish Singer/Songwriter Fionn Regan has been confirmed to support Grammy Award-winning label mate Lucinda Williams during her unprecedented 5-Night run of shows in New York City. Williams will perform five of her eight critically-acclaimed albums [Lucinda Williams (1988), Sweet Old World (1990), Car Wheels On A Gravel Road (1998), Essence (2001) and World Without Tears (2003)] in their entirety, one album per night.

Williams recently concluded her 5-night run at the El Rey Theater in Los Angeles where she was joined on stage by special guests including Steve Earle, Shelby Lynne, Jim Lauderdale, Robbie Krieger (The Doors), Emmylou Harris, John Doe, Ann Wilson and more. No other artist was on the bill with Williams during the Los Angeles run, but she personally selected Regan to perform as part of her New York series.
 
Fionn Regan’s debut, The End Of History, was released on Lost Highway in July, just before his nomination of the UK’s Nationwide Mercury Prize. The U.S. release of The End Of History came with a lot of international praise from the press including The Times (****), The Guardian (****), Mojo  (****) and the US press joined in with acclaim from Associated Press, USA Today, Relix, Paste, Filter, HARP, Newsweek, People and more.

Williams’ Los Angeles performances were met with unanimous praise from the LA Times, Daily Variety, LA Weekly and Entertainment Weekly’s, Chris Willman, who said “the nights spent in her company will end up rating as one of the most satisfying musical weeks of my life.…”

Look for special guests and some surprises during Williams’ New York City shows.

Fionn Regan's debut album with Lost Highway, The End of History, will be available for purchase beginning July 10th! 

For your reading pleasure, below are a handful of reviews.  If you are still curious and want to know more, we hope you will take a moment to visit Fionn's page on our website and listen to a few songs from the album.  More of a visual person?  Definitely watch "Be Good or Be Gone" - the superb video that made us fall in love with Fionn.  We hope you do, too.

USA Today

Performing Songwriter

Newsweek

Relix

Absolute Sound

Filter

Amazon

Venus Zine

Aquarian Weekly

Pioneer Press

InsideBayArea.com

Music Box

Amplifier

Venice

PASTE

Tennessean

New York Daily News

ChromeWaves

USA Today's Popcandy

By MICHAEL McCALL, For The Associated Press

Fionn Regan, "The End of History" (Lost Highway)

Young Irishman Fionn Regan may have titled his American debut "The End of History," but its likely the beginning of a long career for this literary inclined singer-songwriter.

Regan's stripped-bare songs often feature little more than his finger-picked acoustic guitar and an occasional cello or piano, yet they teem with dazzling playing and sprightly reflections on love and life. His songs reach far beyond folk-pop cliches with a fresh attitude that embraces life with clear-eyed optimism rather than depressive self-pity. Even songs about turning points in relationships, such as the wondrous "Be Good or Be Gone," refuse to bow to anger or pain.

Regan has shot a video in an old library and he regularly drops literary references into his songs: In "The Underwood Typewriter," he pairs changing the ribbon in a manual typewriter to watching his lover undress, with both coming across as favored repeated activities; and in "Put a Penny in the Slot," he begins by realizing he's accidentally brought home some of a friend's belongings, with a book being chief among them, and later includes author Paul Auster among his rhymes.

These highbrow references don't come across as pompous or self-conscious. Instead, like many Irish poets before him, he's simply celebrating words and introspection as part of what's worth celebrating in a life well-lived.

CHECK THIS TRACK OUT: "Hey Rabbit" shows off Regan's hypnotic acoustic guitar style while offering a trippy, picturesque story that could've been inspired by "Alice in Wonderland."

FIONN REGAN – THE END OF HISTORY

 The community of musicians can be divided into two categories -- those who want to create and those who do so because they have no other choice. As he proves on his dauntingly mature, intriguingly nuanced Lost Highway debut, The End of History, singer-songwriter Fionn Regan clearly falls into the decidedly rarefied latter category.

 “I think that songwriting and storytelling are very much in the marrow of your bones,” says Regan.  “Some can get by with counterfeit for a while, but people will find holes in the fence, sooner or later” he laughs. “It’s more a matter of tapping into what’s there, opening up a valve.”

 The soft-spoken 26-year-old coaxes an intoxicating array of emotion and detail into his fragile-yet-gripping songs -- a body of work that’s already elicited comparisons to forebears as varied as Nick Drake for his guitar playing and to Woody Guthrie for his wordplay.  It’s easy to understand why, given the filigreed acoustic finger-picking and raw lyrical stance of songs like the cinematic “Be Good or Be Gone” the menacing “Snowy Atlas Mountains” or the allegorical  “Hey Rabbit” with its social conscience, songs that paint intensely vivid pictures -- so vivid, in fact, that Regan hesitates to elaborate as to their deeper origins.

 “I think of the songs as documents, short films, the evidence of journeys I’ve taken,” says Regan. “I hesitate to get very specific about them, to give them a date of birth or an address. I liken that to trapping a bird in concrete. Once you start hammering a nail into something, there’s a chance the head of the nail will break off – I don’t want build walls around them.”

 There’s little chance of that, thanks in part to Regan’s picturesque imagery and ethereal way with an arrangement. He keeps the frills to a minimum on the dozen-song collection, getting his point across with little more than voice, acoustic guitar and piano (most of The End of History’s songs were captured in one or two takes) he never gives the idea that he’s practicing minimalism for its own sake. That comes into particularly sharp focus when one hones in on his guitar playing, a beguiling brew of rhythmically sturdy finger-picking (the backbone of “Hunters Map”) and (as on the twinkling “Abacus”), lissome passages in which every note resonates with crystalline clarity.

   “The album has a definite thread,” says Regan, who produced The End of History himself (mixing the album with one-time Cocteau Twins member Simon Raymonde). “songs present themselves and ask you to do certain things. It’s like going to a party -- some people end up in the garden and others end up in the kitchen. It’s no different with songs.”

 Songs began presenting themselves to Regan when he was growing up in Bray, Ireland -- a seaside town in rural county Wicklow -- where his parents presided over what he describes as “a house that was a magnet for every musician and poet within miles.” He takes pains to explain that the family didn’t fit the standard bohemian profile, but hewed closely to old-school traditions -- a homespun attitude that pervades both his plain-spoken, unflaggingly affecting songs and his unfussy demeanor.

 Ever restless, he drifted from town to town over the past few years, working odd jobs and touring relentlessly which gradually, inexorably, gathered him a sizable following among both fans and the British press, and when the album was released in the UK last year, it was met with unanimous praise. Mojo proffered four stars in a glowing review that dubbed the disc “a debut that oozes rare confidence, startling maturity and originality,” while The Guardian simply stated “folk music has a new Pied Piper.”

 Regan’s siren song, while often melancholy, isn’t universally downbeat. As he proves in several of The End of History’s standout tracks, he’s every bit as capable of tickling listeners with bits of wry humor -- as he does in “Put a Penny in the Slot,” perhaps a kleptomaniac’s paean, or warming them with the burnished nostalgic tones of “The Underwood Typewriter.” Even the album title itself, which, might seem dark on the surface, has an element of uplift in it, in Regan’s eyes.

 “I bought this coat in a thrift store, and inside there was this brown paper envelope, folded over,” he explains. “The only thing written on it was that phrase, you reach certain stations in your life, completing that record marks the end of an era for me.  Getting to it wasn’t easy; I’ve said making the album was like building an ocean liner with a butter knife. Your fingerprints are all over it, you learn to use the butter knife to your advantage, and then you have to see if it’s seaworthy.”

  Set sail with Fionn Regan on The End of History and you’ll experience a trip that will lodge in the memory bank for ages.