Sometimes the best music is made by people who earn their living doing work other than being a full-time musician. Such a scenario works too often for it not to be true. Think about it: little or no anxiety about how to make ends meet; gigs as and when they suit; recording songs at your own pace on your own indie label; and delivering them to a niche but highly appreciative audience.
For someone like the Helsinki-based Dublin songwriter Barry McCormack, this approach may not be as perfect a picture as he might have envisioned in the mid- to late 1990s, when he was a member of Jubilee All-Stars. That band (signed to Sony via a lovingly curated offshoot label, Lakota Records) was viewed less as the next big thing than as rather a ragamuffin bunch of musicians who held one topic very close to the collective bosom: Dublin, its messy pre-Celtic Tiger era, its rich literary and musical heritage, and its creeping gentrification.
McCormack has covered similar themes throughout his solo albums, notably his 2003 debut, We Drank Our Tears, Last Night, As I Was Wandering, from 2006, and Small Mercies, from 2011. Painting Devils is album number eight, and while geographically some things have changed, his insightful, witty and much-admired lyrics are a constant.
Every one of the album’s 11 songs contains the kind of wishlist stories that songwriters would give their fingers for. One example is from Tourist – “My wife said there were things we had to see before we die/ Let’s go on a world cruise, she said, try a coach tour/ Stand on the grassy knoll or some ancient English moor/ It hasn’t been easy …” – but every track groans with intelligence and humour.
McCormack polishes everything with a delivery that brings to mind a mixture of Bob Dylan’s mischievous narrative songs and John Cooper Clarke’s chewing-gum rhythms. In other words it’s a hoot from start to end.
Painting Devils is launched at Whelan’s, Dublin, on Saturday September 14th, and then at Coughlan’s, Cork, on Wednesday September 18th
