SOUL SURMISE

YESTERDAY - THE FILM REVIEWED

I loved it, loved it, loved it!

You can tell a very good movie when no one rises to leave as soon as the credits start. When you then see the staff coming in to clean, dancing in the aisle…

I am a Beatles’ fanatic but not all films anchored in a Beatles’ soundtrack have worked. The late 70s Bee Gees dominated Sgt Peppers Lonely Hearts Club Band was quickly forgotten! Much as I wanted to love 2007’s Across The Universe, a few great covers on the soundtrack were all I have revisited.

Yesterday is so different.

Now, let me say at the outset. This is a Romantic Comedy in the same lineage as Notting Hill and Love Actually! It is the classic tale of the romantic battle between love and fame and it ends in Hollywood’s obligatory way. It is a feel good movie and boy it makes you feel good.

For me, however, the success of Yesterday is The Beatles. A world that has forgotten The Beatles. Oh my. The only good thing would have been no Oasis! After that, it is a cultural travesty. 

When Jack Malik, played by Himesh Patel, discovers that a 12 second black out across the world has erased the memory of The Beatles (and one or two other things that become known as we go) he has two things going down. 

The first is that he has the most brilliant catalogue of songs at his disposal in his attempts to become a successful songwriter. He can even pull George Harrison's Something, Here Comes The Sun and While My Guitar Gently Weeps in among the Lennon-McCartney ones!

Secondly, he is almost like the chosen one who has the onerous task of preserving that catalogue. He needs a trip to Liverpool to search the back of his memory to keep songs like Eleanor Rigby, Strawberry Fields Forever and Penny Lane alive. 

As if The Beatles are not enough of a core to the love story, Ed Sheeran is added to the piece. Playing the boy next door Suffolk pop star to Malik’s Suffolk boy next door, Sheeran nurtures Malik’s talent and eventually gives way that Malik’s songs are better than his. He has no jealousy. He plays himself well!

As a Beatles’ fan since I was fifteen years old, I absolutely basked in the joy of their songs and their story. These songs are an amazing avenue to feeing good. Well spotted Richard Curtis and Danny Boyle. It is the way that they give Yesterday its originality and utter charm. 

I would love to wax more lyrical but there are so many little twists and turns and laugh out loud jokes that I am giving no spoilers. If you want to have a great night out and party with the cinema staff then Yesterday is the movie for you.

As it ends, and you sit in the theatre listening to the greatest band that ever wrote songs, a good question to ask would be about vocation. Does art need sales and fame and wealth or can it be used in more everyday ways? Can we cast aside that chalice of the temptation of being more than we should be so that we can be all that we are?

Evil's face might not be subtle but watch it close. This is a story of the spiritual learning of the right choices. Love always and truth as often as possible is its best slice of wisdom.

Yesterday might be a rom com but don't miss these spiritual questions. An even more angsty performance of Help! is particularly well placed in the story

KARINE POLWART - SCOTTISH SONGBOOK

Karine Polwart is an artist as an artist should be; the way I like them to be. She is thoughtful, spiritual, politically astute and has great social critique. She loves language and of course the melodies and musical arrangements that she sets her words in.

If you were lazy, you might miss this as a stop gap album between her heavily lauded Laws Of Motion (Soul Surmise Album of 2018 for goodness sake!) and whatever she writes next. This is no kind of stop gap. This is a project of breadth and depth. It is weighty with social, spiritual and emotional reflection.

Equally a lazy approach and you’ll miss a significant chunk of this work. Don’t stream it or pay for the download. Don’t even buy the ordinary hard copy edition. Art is much more precious than a throw away mp3 and songs are art. Especially this collection.

Buy the deluxe edition, hard book and all. It is the only one that should exist! The book is as much a part of this project as the songs. Inside the striking artwork of Jen Frankwell, Polwart shares essays of life growing up as a teenager in Scotland when the majority of these songs were written and that deeply emotional piece that she wrote when she heard that Scott Hutchinson of Frighted Rabbit had passed away.

Scottish Songbook is personally perfect. I have a similar love for this period of Scottish music. The last two years of the 80s and most of what I bought was outta Glasgow or not far away. That image of the SA 90 cassette tape on the cover. I had most of these bands in some mixed tape or other! Deacon Blue, The Blue Nile and The Waterboys make it on here but there were also Aztec Camera, The Big Dish, Love and Money, The Bathers, Danny Wilson and more. 

Before that there was Big Country all swirling guitars sounding like bagpipes and the post folk songwriting talents of John Martyn and Gerry Rafferty.

After them came Biffy Clyro, Chvrches and most poignant of all, to this collection, Frightened Rabbit who lost their main man Scott Hutchison to suicide last year.

When this idea started Polwart put together an evening of live songs. Some of those didn’t make the cut, that late 80s phase is only sparsely represented. Yet, the 11 songs left have given us an album that catalogues Scotland’s recent social history and songs of resilience against the odds.

Songs get reinvented. Big Country’s Chance finds a place to showcase its depth and the songwriting credibility of Stuart Adamson’s work, often ignored:

 

“He came like a hero from the factory floor

With the sun and moon as gifts

But the only son you ever saw

Were the two he left you with” 

 

Polwart eeks the spirituality out of John Martyn’s Don’t Want To Know:

 

“I don't want to know 'bout evil, I only want to know about love”

 

There is catharsis at work in Frightened Rabbit’s Swim Until You Can’t See Land with its forbidding prophecy of Scott Hutchinson’s tragic demise:

 

“Up to my knees now, do I wade? Do I dive?

This sea has seen my like before though it's my first and perhaps last time.

Let's call me a baptist, call this the drowning of the past.

She's there on the shoreline throwing stones at my back.”

 

Whether it is the young girl with the two children, the songwriter with mental health issues or the elderly couple in Strawberry Switchblade’s Since Yesterday, everybody here is looking for Dignity.

Which is of course that Deacon Blue classic. Again like Stuart Adamson, Ricky Ross is a little two quickly dismissed by the prejudiced musical snobs. Dignity has everything, literally  “home, work faith”. It’s about hope against hope. It is about a council worker and a yacht but more important about a place we all need, when it is cold of heart and soul and even body, for some dignity.

Over these 11 Scottish songs, Polwart whose folk roots is all about taking much older songs and reinventing them, uses the same discipline for these younger songs. With glocks, marimbas, omnichords and Indian harmoniums, among more traditional instruments, she takes the songs of her youth apart and rebuilds them, beautifully and with reverence. 

A triumphant artistic success. Take this work in. It will touch you deep within.

STOCKI'S FAVOURITE RECORDS OF 2019... SO FAR

Here are my favourite ten records of 2019 so far... 

 

10. JOSH RITTER - FEVER BREAKS 

read my review here

 

9. FOY VANCE - FROM MUSCLE SHOALS

review to come

 

8. MARTYN JOSEPH - HERE COME THE YOUNG

read my review here

 

7. ANTHONY TONER - OUR LADY OF THE WIND AND RAIN

read my review here

 

6. PATTY GRIFFIN - PATTY GRIFFIN

review to come

 

5. BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN - WESTERN STARS

read my review here

 

4. RUNABAY - BETWEEN THE LINES

read my review here

 

3. THE HEAD AND THE HEART - LIVING MIRAGE

read my review here

 

2. LUKE SITAL-SINGH - A GOLDEN STATE

read my review here

 

1. OVER THE RHINE - LOVE AND REVELATION

read my review here

RYAN VAIL & ELMA ORKESTRA - BORDERS Live AT THE MAC 28.6.19

Though I admire Ryan Vail I probably wouldn’t have been at this concert had it not been for my friend Chris not being able to go and donating his tickets to Janice and I. Thank you sir. We were front row, centre and in the Mac that is pretty much on the stage! 

Our friend Jude spotted us at the interval. Just back for a holiday from the States, where she now lives, she said she didn’t know what to expect. I kind of agreed. As she left she said, “It might be magical.”

Described as genre warping I have enjoyed Ryan Vail’s work, his Sea Legs EP with songwriter Ciaran Lavery and his For Very Silence album. I didn’t think I knew Elma Orkestra but discovered that he is genre warping too. 

Elma Orkestra is one man. His name is Eoin O'Callaghan and I had already reviewed him under another pseudonym, Best Boy Grip, when I was impressed how he held his own between Stephen Bishop and Iain Archer in an In The Round event at the Empire. Not that I realised that until after the gig.

Well, here are the genre warpers together. What are they attempting to do? Well, tonight they were playing their new record Borders. Vail explained that it was abut the land between Derry and Muff! The place where Vail and O’Callaghan live and create. 

Of course in these borderland days between the UK being in Brexit and not being in Brexit, borders have become a hot topic. Though that gives this work an added poignancy the actual focus of the music here are the rivers and hills and roads and bridges of the border and the beaches and ocean of Donegal.

On one side of the stage Ryan Vail was throwing out pumping beats that actually would have been more at home, that same night, in the vastness of Glastonbury. On the other side the Elma Orkestra is carefully caressing out ambient organ and piano sounds. The mix is that blend of variety and a little tension that characterise most borders.

At the outset Vail suggests that the lighting will be such that you will not see them on the stage and adds that that is how it should be. Instead, we are focused on the cinema screen behind them where images take us over those rivers and beaches and oceans. O’Callaghan tell us he has been making drones for a long time. This filming seems to be the artistic final product.

It is indeed magical in sound and vision. To perhaps break the ambient instrumentals we have two guests who add even more to the richness of the night and record. Máire (Moya) Brennan brings that distinctive haunting Donegal voice to Colours. It sounds utterly beautiful in front of images of forests and trees.

Stephen James Smith is a different vocal attack. That deep Dublin brogue is a God given gift to a poet of such earthy gutsy power. Smith adds a new word-take on his most famous work My Ireland. Renamed, for this context, My Island it certainly shifts the focus from the greenery and the waves.

 

My Ireland oh my

You are Omagh!

Danny Boy in Loftus Road

Good Friday, Bloody Sunday

An island in Trouble in shock

Caught in the crosshairs of a Glock

 

Though Borders is not primarily about Brexit, it is political. Seamus Mallon lent his voice and they confessed that even if politicians didn’t agree to loan their voices, they used them anyway; Arlene is in there!

Back to Stephen James Smith’s words:

 

This is the community of borders where broader issues are at stake

This community has been feared

They've been to hell

 

The boys spoke of Borders being meant to be an uplifting piece. Oh it was honest about the way borders divide and contain and reduce freedoms but it was beautiful in its feel of the richness of life that happens in communities even if they stagger a contentious border. 

It was an inspiration… a celebration… and did I say… magical! 

BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN - WESTERN STARS

I remember back in 1993. I was in Wichita with songwriter Rich Mullins. He was playing versions of his next record, A Liturgy, A Legacy and a Ragamuffin Band. We had heard the songs, live in our front room in Dublin, just after they’d been written the summer before. Here they were recorded but Rich told us that all was left to do were the strings. NO! Our last words before we left Rich was, “No strings Rich, no strings!”

I hated strings and any kind of orchestration in rock music. It was soft. Easy listening. Twenty five years later and I am listening to a Bruce Springsteen album covered in orchestration and loving it. Whatever happened in between?

Jimmy Webb is the simple answer. My primary musical love is the song and songwriters who hone them into 4 minute perfection. Discovering Jimmy Webb’s Ten Easy Pieces record drew me into the genius of his craft.

From there I had to listen to those 70s orchestrated pop versions of Witchita Lineman, By The Time I Get To Phoenix and Galveston by Glen Campbell. Webb had torn out my bigotry towards the cinematic strings.

Western Stars suggests that Springsteen has gleaned more from Jimmy Webb than the strings and brass. Western Stars, just like Webb’s songs, are filled with those American places names, usually on the edge of the desert. Springsteen has even used Galveston already - Galveston Bay on The Ghost Of Tom Joad.

Around 1989 I heard Springsteen say, “I realised that now that I put all these people in all these cars I was going to have yo find some place for them to go.” He went on to talk about connection and community. 

Thirty years later and he has made an entire record of people who are out on the highway with nowhere to go. There are thirteen punters on this record and most of them are somewhere out on the road either by choice or life’s unfortunate fate. A stuntman, a failed actor, a failed songwriter and on it goes.

I am left thinking that this is as bleak an album as Springsteen has released since Nebraska. Most of his recent records have swathes of light, shining across the realities of 9/11, the Iraq War or the economic crash. Even those western stars don’t twinkle much light across this album. 

Why? Is Springsteen saying something about his own life? Is this some comment on the state of America? Or did he just want to see what would happen if he hadn’t found all those people, in all those cars a place to go! The gentle reflective closer Moonlight Motel has the jilted lover parking outside the boarded up motel they used to go to, pouring a glass of Jack Daniels thinking at least, “It’s better to have loved.”

Whatever Springsteen’s reasons these are fascinating characters to engage with. There is no smaltz in the lyrics!

The sound does takes time. With Bruce Springsteen we are more comfortable with Tom Morello adding his noisy guitar sound than the tremolo guitar favoured on Western Stars. I will warn that for some Springsteen fans this new sweetness of sound might take time to orientate to. 

It was about four listens before Western Stars sneaked through the door of my heart. Like Webb there is some serious song craft here. The melodies and the the half melodies are gorgeous. Before you know it you are singing along to The Wayfarer, Tucson Train, Sundown, There Goes My Miracle, Hello Sunshine and the title track! 

Though it is another original turn n the road for Springsteen you can set Western Stars on the shelf between The Ghost Of Tom Joad and Tunnel Of Love. If you make it through your disorientation, you will find that alienation has never sounded so utterly beautiful.

BOB DYLAN'S ROLLING THUNDER REVUE - THE BOX SET AND FILM REVIEWED

The first time I heard anything from the 1975 leg of the Rolling Thunder Revue Tour  I was enthralled. It was over the PA before The Waterboys best gig of all-time at the Ulster Hall, Belfast in 1986. Bold to be playing a bootleg but for The Waterboys it was a touchstone to exactly what they were trying to achieve in that particular period of the band.

Mike Scott was always a Dylan fan and perhaps when he left London for Dublin and finally Spiddal in Co Galway, he was seeking the spirit of Rolling Thunder Revue. Certainly on that Ulster Hall stage that night he found it. It was this loose traveling band type feel with Steve Wickham doing his best Scarlett Rivera on whirling dervish fiddle. They even finished with the same song with different lyrics This Land Is Your Land!

From that night Rolling Thunder Revue was my Dylan holy grail and when the fifth in Dylan’s amazing Bootleg Series was from those 1975 gigs I was a happy boy.

Now, we have a fourteen CD box set of five full concerts from the tour as well as rehearsals and rarities and, on top of that, a Martin Scorsese film Rolling Thunder Revue A Bob Dylan Story.

So what do I think?

Well, what these new releases have done has been to take me back to that era of Dylan’s career and fall in love with it all over again. These live shows are a few weeks before Dylan released Desire and I had forgotten how great that record is. 

In the live setting Isis is a theatrical drama of a spoken word/poem/song. When Dylan runs Oh Sister, One More Cup Of Coffee and Sara together it is, for me, the breathtaking highlight of the shows. We haven’t even mentioned Hurricane, written for wrongly incarcerated boxer Rubin “Hurricane” Carter. Scarlett Rivera’s fiddle adds that extra vibrant dimension to Dylan’s songs. I cannot get enough of it.

Having said that, I would not have anyone rushing out to buy the box set. Like too many of Dylan’s recent Bootleg releases there is a lot of music that is a little repetitive. Five full gigs of similer sets is a not that necessary. The rarities and reversals are interesting but sound quality lacks in places. 

The film? Well as a documentary it is cluttered with some nonsense and we see nothing of the other live acts on the stage. The up to date interview with Dylan is interesting enough without anything too revelatory. The Joan Baez interactions are fascinating. Joni Mitchell joins the band and seems to be writing Coyote, or at least finishing it, on the tour which was news to me. What is better is Allen Ginsberg summing the whole thing up with a poetic review of the Revue that highlighted the shire for freedom, imagination and community in the art.

For the most part though the in-between songs bits are dull and distracting. I would have much preferred that they had just given us the music. The live footage is Dylan at his very very best. If I had a time machine to go back to any Dylan tour this would be the one. Dylan is in the zone, there is passion in his voice and intentionality about every phrase. The extraordinary band are utterly tight in their looseness! 

A few month later, Dylan will be out on tour again and though I do love the Hard Rain record that resulted, the loose casual freedom of the feel is gone and Dylan is roughing the riffs to take on punk.

Now where is my Desire, Abandoned Love, Catfish and Golden Loom…

RUNABAY - BETWEEN THE LINES

Could anything good come out of Nazareth, they said of Jesus. Well, can a contender for rock album of the year come out of the Glens of Antrim, might be a similar question. Just as Jesus appeared fully formed to change the world forever, so Runabay appear adult and mature with many interesting nuggets on life to reflect on. I’ll leave the metaphor there… (but just to say for the theologically obsessed and paranoid, this is not a theological comparison!!)

I first heard Runabay in the Welcome Area of Fitzroy during a SoFar gig at the end of 2016. I was captivated by the harmonies, the cello and the laid back groove. They used the cello like an East Antrim pedal steel, giving their music a rustic authenticity and the harmonies sounded like the gentle waves caressing the Antrim Coast road. It all blended into a beautiful soothe of a sound.

Like everything down the Glens, it has taken time for the album to come out and having anticipated it for coming up on three years I am not at all disappointed. 

The whole thing begins with Dublin beat poet Stephen James Smith’s spoken word:

 

We must create to know who we can be

I say this for you, I say this for me

We must create to know who we can be

 

Preach it poet brother. I am all over such a philosophy of life. For me God set us all off on that path. He created and when humans were formed in his image the only thing we could know about ourselves was that we meant to be creative.

Anyway, Smith’s opening lines and ending reprise is (once again) not in any way theological, as much as two book ends between which Runabay create to know themselves. In doing so in a tracklist of crafted songs they give us hints to help us know our universal humanity. Smith’s sets a high literary and musical bar for every note, word and rhyme. You I Know calls us to “listen”. We should!

As I have said, the listening is a joy. They have been compared to so many bands but, believe it or not, I heard echoes of The Moody Blues; the spoken word, the layered instrumentation and the harmonies. They might just have been added to my dream Fitzroy bill along with Over The Rhine and Romantica (playing Fitzroy on June 17th!!!). They would fit perfectly!

In the end there are undoubtedly hints of west coast California but Runabay have conjured their own original East Coast sound, East Coast of Antrim that is. 

Like that wee beach at Murlough Bay, this is a hidden gem… but once found… you’ll be returning… again and again! 

ROMANTICA - AMERICA

An album called America with a host of references to Belfast and Donegal gives a clue to the background of singer and songwriter Ben Kyle. Brought up in Northern Ireland until his late teens he then moved to Minneapolis where he formed Romantica. America is their second album and it is a beauty. Think Over The Rhine with a male vocal or Ryan Adams with a gentler voice. The songs had my ears and soul pricking up at regular intervals with instrumental flourishes, some from ex Wilco and Jayhawks girl Jessy Green, and lyrical twists and turns that are clever yet never over indulgent.

National Side is intoxicatingly infectious, pure unadulterated catchiness with great lyrics, laced with humour and a family’s past and future. The only slight problem might be the references to FA Cup and rhyming Gary Linekar with Salt and Vinegar might not be so easily understood in America’s mid west but he does get to pop reference David Beckham before he sets America on fire with LA Galaxy.

There is a retrospective thread to the entire album with memories of life in Belfast or family holidays to the Gulf Of Mexico. Fiona, another radio friendly hit if there ever was one, takes a bleak look at Belfast. Listening to it in the post Adams and Paisley photo op that brings a bright future ever more probably, makes it sound like a bygone age, where bombs were exploding, policeman were frightened and Belfast was going nowhere. In painting the grimness of Belfast’s past it somehow brings out the joy of where it actually has gone.

There’s a sense too that Kyle has taken Sufjan Stevens’ contribution to rock on board. The brass on National Side shows it in the arrangements but where so many seem to think that you have to be over clever and complicated in the post Sufjan days Kyle moves more in the slip stream of his story telling and the spirit of capturing places and people. Kyle seems smart enough to know what to be influenced by and what to avoid trying to copy.

Another similarity of Stevens is Romantica’s ability to talk spiritual without pontificating dogma. Drink The Night Away is the most played song on my Ipod and seems to be about the reckless tragedy of teenage drinking exploits until theological questions are asked of Jesus. In the subtlest and soul-song-stopping twist Jesus appears in the last scene to raise the cup and "drink the night away."

The fragile God Walks On The Water is one for quiet reflection at any time of doubt or struggle. It is as honest and accurate a lesson in pilgrimage as you will hear in many a long year: "God walks on the water/I walk through the rain/One day we’ll walk together/When he comes back again."

Everything about the album is seemingly so effortless. I predict Album of the Year already!

An album called America with a host of references to Belfast and Donegal gives a clue to the background of singer and songwriter Ben Kyle. Brought up in Northern Ireland until his late teens he then moved to Minneapolis where he formed Romantica. America is their second album and it is a beauty. Think Over The Rhine with a male vocal or Ryan Adams with a gentler voice. The songs had my ears and soul pricking up at regular intervals with instrumental flourishes, some from ex Wilco and Jayhawks girl Jessy Green, and lyrical twists and turns that are clever yet never over indulgent.

National Side is intoxicatingly infectious, pure unadulterated catchiness with great lyrics, laced with humour and a family’s past and future. The only slight problem might be the references to FA Cup and rhyming Gary Linekar with Salt and Vinegar might not be so easily understood in America’s mid west but he does get to pop reference David Beckham before he sets America on fire with LA Galaxy.

There is a retrospective thread to the entire album with memories of life in Belfast or family holidays to the Gulf Of Mexico. Fiona, another radio friendly hit if there ever was one, takes a bleak look at Belfast. Listening to it in the post Adams and Paisley photo op that brings a bright future ever more probably, makes it sound like a bygone age, where bombs were exploding, policeman were frightened and Belfast was going nowhere. In painting the grimness of Belfast’s past it somehow brings out the joy of where it actually has gone.

There’s a sense too that Kyle has taken Sufjan Stevens’ contribution to rock on board. The brass on National Side shows it in the arrangements but where so many seem to think that you have to be over clever and complicated in the post Sufjan days Kyle moves more in the slip stream of his story telling and the spirit of capturing places and people. Kyle seems smart enough to know what to be influenced by and what to avoid trying to copy.

Another similarity of Stevens is Romantica’s ability to talk spiritual without pontificating dogma. Drink The Night Away is the most played song on my Ipod and seems to be about the reckless tragedy of teenage drinking exploits until theological questions are asked of Jesus. In the subtlest and soul-song-stopping twist Jesus appears in the last scene to raise the cup and "drink the night away."

The fragile God Walks On The Water is one for quiet reflection at any time of doubt or struggle. It is as honest and accurate a lesson in pilgrimage as you will hear in many a long year: "God walks on the water/I walk through the rain/One day we’ll walk together/When he comes back again."

Everything about the album is seemingly so effortless. I predict Album of the Year already!

MAVIS STAPLES - WE GET BY

What a late burst of artistic energy the life of Mavis Staples has given us. Only Johnny Cash can claim such a prolific seventh decade. Of Staples 14 solo records over fifty years, 5 have been in the last decade! All of them have been brilliant and crucially relevant to our times.

Wilco’s Jeff Tweedy has been up until now what Rick Ruben had been to Cash. For We Get By, Staples has shifted to Ben Harper. Quite the risk. Quite the success!

Ben Harper? Well Mr Harper was a conduit for some of my coolest cred. Having discovered him early on in his career, I spread the word and my friend Jimmy Symington tipped off none other than Terri Hooley who on a stage in front of me one evening credited the Reverend Steve Stockman for him discovering Ben Harper.

Any even brief glance at Harper’s CV makes his collaboration with Staples seem obvious. A blues guitarist with interest in Gospel and protest, he has worked with The Blind Boys Of Alabama and even wrote with Staples on Love and Trust on her Livin’ On A High Note record.

Harper writes all the songs on We Get By and he has sussed out perfectly Mavis’s life, struggles and spirituality. 

The opening Change lays out the context of modern America for the African American:

 

Fingers on the trigger around here

Fingers on the trigger around here

Bullets flying, mothers crying

We gotta change around here

Get it straight, be sure that you hear

Things gonna change around here

 

The entire collection, of which I particularly love Stronger, Sometimes and the title track, sings of the resilience that comes from love and faith. Everything is based around that voice and Harper’s tough blues strum, sometimes driving Mavis along, at other times gently weeping; always strong and foundational.

If there is a weakness, perhaps it is the variety of sound and lyric that Tweedy brought but on this one We Get By is all the better for the change. 

KIERAN GOSS AND ANNIE KINSELLA - OH, THE STARLINGS

Janice and I were getting into a lift in a Belfast hotel when we turned to see Kieran Goss and a woman about to join us. In the few floors together they were warm, friendly and full of personality. It was a lovely encounter.

The last Kieran Goss album I had bought was Blue Sky Sunrise and so on getting home I checked out any new releases. Well, who would have believed it. Kieran had just released a new record, a collaboration with his wife, Annie Kinsella, the woman in the lift. Sorry Annie, I didn't realise!

I started listening to Oh, The Starlings and was immediately drawn in.  

Surprising to me, the woman in the lift, was doing the vocal heavy lifting with Kieran playing a more supporting role on most tracks. Annie Kinsella is good. A pure voice, evocative, with an Irish tinge. The west of Ireland betrays her on WB Yeats' The Song Of Wandering Aengus and she could even be a gentle Mary Coughlan on Into Your Arms.

The songs. What struck me, as I glanced across the credits, was the strength of songwriting power around Newry, County Down. Brendan Murphy, from the 4 of Us, is a co write on 4 of the songs and Colum Sands, from just down the road in Rostrevor, features too, on maybe the highlight track for me Michael's Orchard. 

Not that I could describe any of these songs as fillers. This is the strongest of collections. The yearning love song Hymn To Love blends in the spiritual like Van Morrison's Have I Told You Lately, Hollywood Boulevard, a long way from Sugar Island, is insightful social comment and Rodney Crowell's Jewel Of The South is poetically at the top of the class. All said, Goss and Kinsella's title track is breathtaking in the sweetness of its simplicity.

In the end the record was exactly like those few moments in the hotel lift. Here were eleven songs that were warm, friendly and full of personality; a lovely encounter. Eleven finely honed and arranged songs, with the sparsest of accompaniment and all the more beautiful for that!

(side note: I also casually bumped into Brendan Murphy on a Dublin London flight the very week in March 1993 that She Hits Me was in the Uk Top 40. We travelled into London on the Underground and I got a lovely guest list for their show that night at the Subterranean!)