SEÁN TYRRELL
Walker of the Snow
The Vital Record 003
* * *
To get a sense of Seán Tyrrell’s latest, think Woody Guthrie
rated R. Like Guthrie, Tyrrell’s voice will never invoke adjectives such as
“mellifluous,” but it’s choked full of emotional honesty. Unlike Guthrie,
Tyrrell is far more direct and dark in discussing the seamier side of life. His
musical treatment of the Oscar Wilde poem “Reading Gaol” is so downright creepy
that when he sings, “each man slays the thing he loves” you envision Tyrrell
hovering in the shadows with a knife. There are lots of sanitized versions of
“Ringsend,” but Tyrrell unabashedly opens with the original words: “I will live
in Ringsend with a red-headed whore.” Then there are the songs that quake with
righteous anger, like his cover of John Lennon’s “Working Class Hero,” and
“Black Hole,” Tyrrell’s take down of phonies. Yet, there are also moments of
unexpected tenderness–a delicate instrumental of “The Derry Air” (“Danny Boy”),
his clipped brogue rendition of “You Are My Sunshine,” and the title track,
originally a late Victorian poem from Charles Dawson Shanly and one Tyrrell
picked up form his collaborations with Davy Spillane. Walker of the Snow is an album of many moods and much of
it–including a rendition of “On Top of Old Smokey”– feels like a throwback to
the days of the Folk Revival. One wonders, in fact, if eighteen tracks aren’t too
many in an age in which music is often purchased a la carte rather than by the
platter, but at least there’s something for everybody. Rob Weir
No comments:
Post a Comment