"Night Visiting"
(Hag's Head)
seven / ten
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BARRY McCORMACK "Night Visiting" (Hag's Head)
seven / ten |
On his third solo album Night Visiting, former Jubilee Allstar member Barry McCormack sounds like he might just be the last gun-slinger in town. However, we are not taking about the Wild West here, unless perhaps McCormack has saddled a horse and taken the M4 from Dublin to Galway.
Instead, Night Visiting is a batch of ten tales that may take a faint nod in the direction of Smog, Palace, or any other Americana figureheads of the past fifteen years, but ismore rooted in its juxtaposition of American country with Irish trad and folk; Luke Kelly and The Clancy Brothers have left their mark on McCormack just as much as Dylan or Cash.
Like all the above, McCormack has a knack of telling a story, and not surprisingly regular comparisons are made to his prose to that of Monaghan writer Patrick McCabe. It's instinctively Irish, both geographically and thematically. Infidelity, murder, porter, betrayal, and minimal redemption are all on the cards; McCormack's characters may on occasion seem as if they came from an Ireland of old where the Assizes were the lofty judicial system. This standard is set from opener "Sean Ryan": you wouldn't get a Yank calling a song that.
Of course, all the wonderful storytelling in the world can't disguise a rubbish song. Thankfully McCormack has got it right on both fronts, with arrangements to match the lyrical content of his wandering bunch. On top of that, he has assembled a strong backing band, and his quasi-hoarse voice lends an air of authenticity to his culchie cowboy mutterings.
With track titles like "The Road To Tryellspass", McCormack may be staggering into the relative unknown of Co. Westmeath; in musical terms, that makes him a rambling outsider, who'll be waiting in the ditches with a song and a story to tell for many years to come.
Ciaran Ryan
www.barrymccormack.com
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