Since the death in April 2023 of Script guitarist Mark Sheehan at the age of 46, the band’s frontman, Danny O’Donoghue, has come out the other side of a destructive boozing habit and started going to Mass every day. He retraces his redemption arc from the darkness of borderline alcoholism into the light of spirituality on a group’s likeable, if often cheesy, new record, Satellites . The Script arrived in 2008 seemingly in answer to the question: what if U2 were even more overblown and preachy than Bono at full tilt? As with their fellow Dubliners, their speciality has always been heart-on-sleeve anthemic rock that always feels just one stumble away from full-blown naff.
Despite the loss of songwriter Sheehan, who died after a short illness, O’Donoghue holds true to those core values on a heartfelt and typically melodramatic comeback album. To get anything at all from The Script, you have to leave your cynicism at the door. Never burdened with self-awareness, on Satellites O’Donoghue recalls his dark times and his road to healing via songs that suggest a hyper-bombastic Take That or Justin Timberlake drafted in as a last-minute frontman for Elbow .
Read Next Morgan Wade deserves to be huge Still, there is no denying the eager-beaver energy or O’Donoghue’s determination to strike up a genuine connection with the listener. Epic opener “Both Ways” finds O’Donoghue crooning mournfully through a blizzard of plastic-funk guitars. On “At Your Feet” he delivers.