NME (August 19, 1995)
7 (out of 10) – …the best work that Friday has put down on record for years; while some of it harks nostalgically to early-’80s electronic cabaret…the album…fits in with such ’90s defining sounds as Portishead or Tricky. Friday creates a more ominous vibe, part `Cabaret’, part Cabaret Voltaire…

Melody Maker (September 2, 1995)
…he effortlessly straddles the line between barfly poet and 21st century Las Vegas headliner….SHAG TOBACCO is a night out on the tiles that takes in pre-war Berlin, Lou Reed’s dazzling transvestite New York, Marc Bolan’s epochal `The Slider’ and Dublin’s late night transients…

Q (January 11, 1996)
3 Stars (out of 5) – …a remarkable piece of work. At least three or four tracks–the sublime, drifting dreamscape of `Angel,’ for instance–could have made Friday a household name….perhaps his over-reliance on…theatrical flourishes…has prevented him being taken to the contemporary breast…

Musician (January 4, 1996)
…still as dramatic and angst-ridden as ever, but this time the songs…are awash in samples and beats, primed for the dancefloor…

The Independent, Andy Gill (August 11, 1995)
On Shag Tobacco, Gavin Friday charts a demi-monde whose physical locale may be Dublin, but whose imagination takes in a wider, more European aspect. James Joyce would understand, I’m sure.

Couched in musical terms of cabaret and late-night cafe, the album traces both strict hetero sensibilities (the lusty “Little Black Dress”) and more polymorphously perverse attitudes, as in the transsexual chanson “Dolls”, wherein “it’s time for Eve to put Adam to sleep”. Friday’s long- time colleague Maurice Seezer adds a little dockside decadence to the latter with a gentle wheeze of accordion, while Bono and Edge buff up the harmonies of the former; elsewhere, a clarinet brings a touch of mannered sleaze to the queenly “Mr Pussy”.

The range of music is certainly impressive, but it’s Friday’s lyrical apprehension of himself that comes across most strongly. In “Caruso”, he uses a scattershot series of cultural references to illustrate the song’s contention that “I’m not myself today”: this is a life lived through vicarious images, populated by fictions and infatuations which, he subsequently realises (in “My 20th Century”), have betrayed him, most notably the great myths of rock’n'roll. Despite this realisation, he opts to continue on his chosen route: clearly, destiny cannot be denied.

AllMusic – Ned Raggett
Friday’s third solo effort, as always with Seezer as his main collaborator, provided another development in his musical approach with the choice of Bomb the Bass mainman Tim Simenon as producer. Further continuing the initial experiments the two did on Adam ‘n’ Eve, Simenon helped create a dance-influenced album that ranges from industrial slams to clean, elegant breaks, in many ways serving as the model for his following work with Depeche Mode on Ultra. There’s more than a few hints of where Massive Attack would end up on Mezzanine as well, as the low pulses and sudden guitar/drum hits on the title track show — and the fact that the lead single from Shag Tobacco was named “Angel.” Friday himself is still the sharp-tongued ruined romantic of the previous albums, as apt to swoon as wittily shred and breathlessly gasp, while Seezer again provides the music and core work on keyboards and accordion (check out “Dolls”) to back him perfectly. The obvious glam inspirations the two have always had get full confirmation via a great cover of T. Rex’s “The Slider,” but rather than trying to recreate that song’s exact atmosphere, Simenon helps whip up a clattering, stop-start performance that still keeps all the sex. As for the rest of Shag Tobacco, it’s one lush, playful plunge after another into just enough decadence. “Angel” sounds rather like an extension of the striking Adam ‘n’ Eve closer “Eden,” similarly mixing wonderful falsetto from Friday with steady yet soaring music, including great fuzz bass from Erik Sanko. With its outrageous title, “Mr. Pussy” gets credit for being named after a legendary transvestite from Dublin, who provides the brief spoken word conclusion and shows he has as much style as Friday himself. Best song title of the bunch: “You, Me and World War Three.”

NME – Gavin Martin (May 27th, 1989)
‘Eschewing currently fashionable national musical traits – Celtic roots revivalism and anthemic rock pride – ‘Each Man’ doesn’t sound the way a major Irish album of ’98 is. But a major album it is. The cabaret waltzes and orchestrated vignettes pursue Friday’s grand tangle of themes – the distance between good and evil, desire and betrayal, faith and salvation – with a singular vision. Bob Dylan’s ‘Death Is Not the End’ joins Wilde’s title track and a cover of Jacques Brel’s sexual nightmare ‘Next’ to give pointers to his own tunes, odes to the benighted, the lost and the lonely. Touching sad scary depths as often as he glimpses hope and new awakenings, Friday is a modern bluesman wearing a showman’s clown mask, he’s a Salvationist of sleaze grappling with the pain of existence.

Musician (February 1990)
Each Man is a rich tapestry of imaginative musical flourishes that allude to wide range of influences, Friday salutes the street songs of ‘30’s Germany and well as the magnificent orchestral punk of Howard Devoto’s Magazine.

OOR – Bert van de Kamp (March 11, 1989)
Especially impressive is Love Is Just a Word. Gavin’s tortured, expressive voice sounds at his best, the music is varied and richly orchestrated. ‘You Take Away the Sun’ is another painful love song, beautifully supported by the sounds of a cello. Next is a Jacques Brel cover, Death Is Not the End one of the more extreme statements of Bob Dylan. Our Man Friday gives them a completely new identity. Somewhere between Marc Almond and Tom Waits there must be a place for Gavin Friday’s damned music. Bittersweet and dangerous as nightshade.

NME – Sean O’Hagan (May 27th, 1989)
In the words of Myles Na Gopaleen, yer man Friday is, even by Ireland’s standards, an ‘inscrutable pancake’. Thus this album comes as a surprise. Reeling in his more outré exhibitionist tendencies, Gavin Friday [ offers up ] 13 choice variations on the contemporary existential malaise – love, sex, loneliness, death and all shades of the human condition in between. The result is a sustained and often startling reinvention of the Brecht-Weill song tradition that merges Friday’s own songs with sympathetic treatments of pervious angst overtures. [...] Throughout, the words and music congeal into a world-weary worldview that owes little, God bless him, to the endless babble of contemporary pap, and loads to the wry, realist wisdom of Wilde, Brecht and the rest. ‘ Each Man Kills the Thing He Loves’ is the sound of a man walking out of step, a contemporary dandy with an unfashionable heedful of ideas concerning truth and beauty and their proximity to the gutter. Friday’s particular heart of darkness never drags us downwards, the gleefulness of his delivery speaking volumes about hope, optimism and, above all, mischief.

Melody Maker – Ian Gittins (1989)
His own songs are skilled essays into the human state, tales of love or dreams dropped onto the spike. How much autobiography is here is debatable, but I’d guess not too much. It doesn’t matter either way. The Man Seezer, for his part, is cleverly self-effacing, tracing hooks deep into the songs yet standing back for Friday to puzzle out his way. Find his feet. ‘Man of Misfortune’ is a superb account of his wrestling attempts to keep some kind of personal faith. [...] Camp comes into it, somewhere. Yet so does understatement. And both combine, somehow, with an odd, addled purity. Which comes down maybe, to the luck of the Irish. A promising debut. So more, please.

Allmusic – Ned Raggett
Making his solo debut with a nod to an earlier Irish aesthete, Friday’s album isn’t merely titled after a legendary line from Oscar Wilde’s Ballad of Reading Gaol, but kicks off with the title track, where all lyrics in fact come from said poem. Each Man Kills shows a slightly calmer Friday at play, making the same transition to Scott Walker-inspired dark, spiked cabaret that kindred spirits Nick Cave and Marc Almond also did in their own solo careers to one extent or another. Friday’s own take on that spirit actually fits exactly between Cave and Almond’s work — the slow pace and country twang of “Tell-Tale Heart” could come right from Your Funeral My Trial. The fact that Friday covers two songs here that Cave and Almond would each separately do later (Bob Dylan’s “Death Is Not the End” and Jacques Brel’s “Next”) further shows the similar inspirations shared. In keeping with the overall transformation, Friday eschews the over the top wails and shrieks of his younger days — his register is still high, but the delivery is much more controlled, showing a greater range while losing none of his desperate passion. Seezer contributes fine lead keyboard work throughout, but Friday’s other key partner is producer Hal Willner, who had clearly demonstrated his own credentials for this kind of music with his Kurt Weill tribute album a few years previously. With a range of talented New York types to work with, including Bill Frisell and Fernando Saunders, Willner gets sympathetic performances from all to back Friday and Seezer’s explorations into wrecked romance, tortured souls and 2 a.m. moods. It isn’t mere recreation of 1930′s Berlin, but a palette of styles, from the dank, slow crawl of “Dazzle and Delight” to the soaring “You Take Away the Sun” and the kicking glam rock-inspired “Man of Misfortune.”