Southern comfort as musicians hit the right notes

There’s lots to admire in the latest batch of albums released by a number of Cork-based music acts, writes Nikki fFrench Davis

A NUMBER of Cork-based music acts have released albums this summer. They include The Hard Ground, Billy Kennedy, The Roaring Forties and Francesca Baines. It was also in Cork that Dublin musician Dylan Tighe launched the stage version of his new album, Record, as part of the Midsummer Festival, so it seems only fitting that this work should be reviewed as part of the summer crop of new music projects.

The Hard Ground’s Broken Conversations is a polished and compelling album. While the two vocalists, Marlene Enright and Pat Carey, have distinct voices as songwriters, the album comes together as a very cogent entity. Its ten tracks, while showing plenty of variety in structure and material, form a clear body of work, a series of vignettes that cast shadows of the dark underbelly of a vaudeville world.

It would be hard to talk about the album without referencing Mick Flannery. While Broken Conversations isn’t quite a concept album in the way of Flannery’s debut Evening Train, there is the same sense of a mature and unified work. The Hard Ground has also developed the same confident use of multiple narrative voices, and comes from a very similar soundworld at times, not least in Carey’s gravelled voice.

The songs are very original and full of atmosphere. Stand-out tracks include Enright’s two duets ‘A Man a God a Woman’ and ‘Bad Faith,’ both of which are richly dramatic and benefit from clever songcraft.

Recorded in Dublin’s Cauldron Studios, the album sounds great, with excellent arrangements including a variety of guest instruments that add colour to the Bandon-based quartet’s core sound.

Billy Kennedy’s debut solo album This Old Life is a more subtle animal. Kennedy’s songs come from a poetic, gentle sensibility and the pace is a relaxed upbeat pop. Infused with Americana, Kennedy has taken care to avoid the trap of sameness by bringing in a number of collaborators, with multi-instrumentalist Cormac O’Connor being the chief contributor.

The opening track ‘Kiss Me All Over the World’ is a sweet, shy waltz that emerges from and dissolves back into foreign language longwave radio. Its accompanying brass band is an atmospheric addition which, while nicely arranged, is just a little hampered by its tinny electronic sound.

Brass player brothers Ian and Herbie Hendricks contribute more to other tracks. The simple voice and guitar arrangement of title track ‘This Old Life’ is as catchy as anything on the album, while the sunny ukelele strums of ‘Take Too Much to Heart’ are shaped with some lovely solo guitar playing, brass colour and backing vocals from Lynda Cullen.

Another album that opens with crackling radio waves is The Roaring Forties’ There Ain’t Nobody Here But Us Chickens. It’s the band’s second album and celebrates their 10th anniversary. It sizzles with authentic vintage sounds and lush arrangements, courtesy of the band’s pianist and musical director Anth Kaley. Trumpeter Roy Kelleher and Ken Marshall on sax are joined on the album by, among others, guest trombonist Paul Dunlea and Karl Rooney, who takes some stratospheric turns on clarinet, sax and flute.

Three original songs find their way onto the album, written by frontman George Patterson. They may not sit completely comfortably among the swing standards which form the larger part of the album, but they are delivered with equal heart.

The debut album from Francesca Baines, Veda, is perhaps the most unusual of this group. Musically it is an exciting mix of modal harmonies, complex rhythms and earthy world music instrumentation. Baines herself plays (among other instruments) banjo, dulcimer, prepared piano, marimba, metallophone and guitar on the album, and has a knack for laying down tight, unusual grooves.

It is her found sounds, however — the ‘street rhythms’, ‘whispering forest’ and ‘water rhythms,’ for instance — that ensure the overall effect is fresh and vital. Her collaborators on the album are many, each chosen for the musicians’ unique style and ability to improvise with what is quite complicated music.

Lyrically, the album is a treasure chest of myths, stories and observations that are dense with material, leavened with humour and reward close attention.

Baines’ vocal delivery is natural and expressive, delighting in syllables and coloured with occasional wordless new-age inflections. It’s rare that a songwriter ventures into territory beyond the theme of love or superficial concerns.

Perhaps the pick of this bunch of new releases is theatre-maker Dylan Tighe’s debut Record, an album snatched from the swirling waters of mental illness. Launched with a theatre production of the same name as part of Cork Midsummer Festival, it opens the listener to an immediate and raw internal world. “You don’t know what I’ve suffered, you don’t know what I’ve seen,” Tighe tells us in ‘Opus.’

In a time when the reality of mental illness is more and more in the public consciousness, Tighe’s album makes for enlightening listening. Opening with a grimly ironic drum roll, the first track is named after Lamotrigine, a so-called ‘mood-stabiliser’ anti-convulsant used to medicate bi-polar depressives. “To give the mind to chemistry, to numb it to the truth, hurts more than the bitter feeling that joy is but a fluke,” sings Tighe. “Mouth as dry as chalk, I read the list of side-effects, convinced I have them all.”

No doubt, the album is dark. However, producer Jimmy Eadie — who has previously worked with Jape and Si Schroeder — brings an edgy groove and broad electronic palette to the mix. This, coupled with great performances from Tighe himself on vocals and guitar, as well as from Seán Mac Erlaine on horns and woodwinds and Conor Murray on drums, ensures that Record makes for riveting listening.