Cathal Coughlan

Cathal Coughlan was always destined to make a final jump into the muddy torch-song of Nick Cave, Tindersticks, Gavin Friday, Scott Walker etc and with his last albums, 2002s 'The Sky's Awful Blue' and 2000s 'Black River Falls' he made the leap with a fair degree of success (artistically, if not commercially). He's always been an arch miserablist and he's never liked buses and I think a combination of these things meant he was never really absorbed into the mainstream in the way of his contemporaries ; the Fatima Mansions spiky pop always seemed on the brink of wide-scale acceptance before Cathal would panic and they'd dive for cover under a hail of noise or a piss-taking Bryan Adams single.

Recently, he's moved a little way into film soundtracking and this could be the future; though whether Cathal will be able to hold his tongue in the spicy sea of Tinseltown long enough to get commisioned is debateable.

The Ghost of Limehouse Cut comes from the solo album Black River Falls and could easily have been a Nick Cave track.

There's the whole of Cathal's debut solo album Grand Necropolitan to download on his Website