Last Train Home

Dear Diary

**Last Train Home** is the debut studio album by Irish recording artist Kaden Walsh it was released by Prism Records on April 6, 1998. All tracks had been produced, arranged, written and composed by Walsh himself with the main Executive of the album at the time being Michael Davies, the label's owner at the time. Walsh began recording for the album around October of 1997 and wrote around 100 songs for the album.

*Last Train Home* reached No. 33 on the Billboard 200 Album charts and No. 10 on the UK Charts. The lead single, "Last Train Home" debuted at No. 21 on the UK Singles Charts with the follow up single "Dear Diary" becoming Walsh's First Top twenty hit, reaching No. 13 on the UK Charts.

## Production

Walsh started recording in September of 1997 at Backwater Studios. Manager at the time Michael Davies was helping Walsh find what often worked and what didn't work on the album as Executive Producer when compiling it together, often usually leading into fights about what sounded sonically better than one another.

In April of the next year, the basic tracking had been done for a majority of the same tracks including the first lead single. Though Davies often stated that another lead single should've been chosen, Walsh would often state that he knew what he was doing musically as an introduction. The basic instrumentation from the album including Guitars, Vocals, Drums and even Piano were done by Walsh during the time of recording.

On March 4th, the album had been mixed and completed, only leaving it a window of a month for marketing given that the marketing team (two at the time) wanted it to have it as a early launch in the hopes that it would be more successful. Walsh had the design of the album cover and singles in mind before anyone had openly suggested it with Walsh sitting on a box for the track list and him sitting on the floor for the single "Dear Diary". In order to save money, Walsh opted in to use the album cover for the title track.

According to Davies, Walsh's manager, approximately, the album cost £2.5 Million Pounds to create, which, caused the company, with the two singles created in the process, to loose over £250,000, however, eventual tours would allow them to make the money back they had lost on the album.

## Singles

"Last Train Home", the singles title track and lead single, broke ground in the UK, Europe and Australia, where it charted at Number 31. The albums second single "Dear Diary" followed in the same path, and became his second Top 40 in the UK, reaching No. 28 for a singular week.

## Critical reception

Thomas Walters of BBC Music Magazine gave it one of the highest ratings amongst the bad of reviews, 3 stars. Who wrote "though there's not much charm to the album production wise, you can hear where a young 20 year old Irishman wants to go, but whatever seems to be this album, isn't where it's going to go, if it's nothing but down"

 BBC Music
 Billboard.com
 The Guardian
 Yahoo! Music
 Allmusic

## Commercial performance

On release in 1998, *Last Train Home* debuted at Number 10 on the UK charts, and Number 33 in the US, it was also one of the first albums from the artist to chart in Japan at Number 33. Worldwide, it approximately sold around 320,000 sales in 1998.

## Track listing

All songs are written by Walsh, except where noted

 **3** | Cool Wit It
 **5** | Put It All In Perspective
 **6** | Murder Was The Case
 **7** | Rags to Riches
 **8** | Too Much Energy

## Personnel

* Kaden Walsh - All Vocals, All Instruments, production
* Michael Davies - Executive producer

## Certification

 **Latin America (LA RIAA)** | —
 **Europe (IFPI)** | —
 **United Kingdom (BPI)** | —
 **Worldwide Sales** | —