"I'm standing under a white flag," sings Danny O'Donoghue, positing his Dublin trio as inheritors to the Emerald Isle's greatest band. The Script have enjoyed Euro-chart success with a mix of lite rock, rap rock and Guinness-informed crooning they call "Celtic soul" — at once soaring, melancholic and treacly. Their second disc's big ballad is "For the First Time," about boozing your way through Ireland's recession. But if O'Donoghue references locally, he thinks globally; B.o.B lends verses to the piano-drenched "Walk Away," and O'Donoghue shifts from singing to raps that could come from an American kid who wouldn't know County Kerry from Katy Perry.
Listen to "Nothing":
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