DEA MATRONA
For Your Sins (self-released)
Six years after meeting in school and deciding to ‘give music a go’, Belfast-based rock duo Dea Matrona release their self-penned and -produced debut album. Easy-listening and chilled, For Your Sins plates up addictive comfort for the listener: rich, well-rounded and intelligently curated.
Vocal and musical traces of Goldfrapp, Miley Cyrus, Dolly Parton and Shania Twain are apparent, as is a retro feel to the arrangements and variety in the instruments picked up by Orlaith Forsythe and Mollie McGinn. The results are clean without sounding overproduced: Red Button may offer familiarity to fans of Stevie Nicks’ 80s hit Edge Of Seventeen (mashup, are you in the room with us?), Glory, Glory (We Are Free) is a stunning demonstration of soft instrumentals with beautiful, harmonised vocals, whilst Wilderness is the Gaelic rock Miley Cyrus track you never knew you needed.
An album that hits the right spot of your musical senses and keeps you hitting repeat: I think the only thing that could elevate For Your Sins is hearing it played live.
words JOSEPH ELIJAH