Reviews

Album: The Henry Girls

The Henry Girls are the sisters Karen, Lorna and Joleen McLaughlin, who hail from Donegal. Louder Than Words is their fourth album, and is as polished an affair as one might expect from a group with so much studio experience. Eight of the ten tracks are their own compositions, which sit comfortably alongside covers of Bruce Springsteen’s ‘Reason to Believe’ and John McBreen’s ‘So Long Not Goodbye’.

Between them, the sisters play fiddle, harp and accordion. Their singing, however, is their strongest point. Their voices are easy on the ear and clear as glass, and interweave with a natural grace that complements the lightness of the melodies.

Louder Than Words demonstrates how far the McLaughlin sisters have come as songwriters. ‘James Monroe’ and ‘The Light in the Window’ are fine songs by any standards. The former sounds like something from the folk tradition, and features the wonderfully named Bog Neck Brass Band, while the latter is the kind of track that could be covered by any number of contemporary pop artists.

‘Home’ is the best of their compositions. The lyrics describe an assortment of lost souls, from “an old man with a rag doll” to a boy begging on the street, wondering how they can have ended up so alone. The track features Fidil and the Inishowen Gospel Choir, whose presence lends a wonderful lushness to the arrangement.

The only track that really jars is ‘Reason To Believe’. Springsteen’s tale of a dead dog and a doomed love affair is hardly one of his finest moments, and it is difficult to see why the Henry Girls bothered to cover it, particularly when so much of his material would be better suited to their voices.

‘So Long But Not Goodbye’ is a wiser choice. McBreen’s account of parting from a lover gives the sisters ample room to play with their harmonies. For a tale of heartache, the song is surprisingly sprightly, and it is not hard to imagine how enjoyable it will be to perform live.

Star Rating: 3/5

Art: Samuel Forde: Visions of Tragedy

Crawford Art Gallery

Visions of Tragedy is an exhibition that continues the Crawford’s tradition of unearthing the history of local art-making. While not on the scale of the gallery’s epic James Barry retrospective in 2005, this new exhibition presents the work of Samuel Forde, who was born in Cork in 1805 — the last year of Barry’s life — and who was arguably a greater talent.

Forde was one of the first students to enrol in the city’s new school of art in 1819. His classmates included John Hogan and Daniel Maclise. Forde was an ardent drawer, who had the benefit of the newly arrived Canova Casts to work from. One drawing in charcoal on paper included here is almost certainly of a classical head from the Canova collection, and reveals him to have been an artist of rare skill and precision at a young age.

Forde’s industry soon won him many admirers and offers of work. While still in his teens, he taught art and worked as a theatrical designer. At 20, he was appointed the first drawing master at the Mechanic’s Institute, which shared premises with the Cork School of Art.

Much of the work Forde made over the next few years has been lost. More of his plans were never realised. Among the pieces that survive is a self-portrait believed to have been painted in the year of his death; it depicts him as an earnest young man, with reddish hair and penetrating eyes.

Towards the end of his life, Forde focused much of his energy on a single painting, Fall of the Rebel Angels. The monumental work is inspired by the passages from Book One of Milton’s Paradise Lost that describe how Lucifer and his followers are driven into hell by the armies of heaven. The painting says much for the scale of Forde’s ambition. Clearly, he was an artist with an eye on posterity. Sadly, he never completed The Fall, as his life was cut short by tuberculosis at 23.

Visions of Tragedy includes a number of sketches — among them The Veiled Prophet of Khorassan, inspired by Thomas Moore’s Lallah Rookh — that are, thankfully, in the Crawford’s own collection. They confirm Forde as a lost talent, one who might well have earned his nickname of ‘the Young Raphael’.

Star Rating: 4/5