Time once again to pay homage to some of the best music to come out of my home country. Not everything I feature here will be rock, per se, and this particular album is a good case in point. It's more an Irish traditional/pop album, but don't hold that against it: it's a great album, and well worth listening to.
No frontiers --- Mary Black --- 1989 (Dara)
One of the most respected and successful Irish artistes, Mary Black assured herself of a place in music history with the release of her fourth album, “No frontiers”, which went directly to the top of the Irish charts and did well elsewhere. It's an eclectic mix of pop, folk, and Irish traditional, with some really nice ballads and well-crafted songs. Joined by such luminaries of the Irish trad music scene as Donal Lunny and Declan Sinnott, this is truly a great little album.
It starts off with the title track, a gentle, traditionally-flavoured ballad, sung with consummate grace by Mary, her light Dublin accent adding to the charm of the song. Carried on acoustic guitar and simple percussion, with accordion accompaniment fleshing the track out, it's a lovely little song, and one of her best known, with some inspired lyrical ideas:
”If life is a barroom/ In which we must wait/ For the man with his finger/ On the ivory gate/ Where we sing until dawn/ Of our fears and our faith/ And we stack all the dead men/ In self-addressed crates.” Lovely backing vocals too from Mandy Murphy.
Things get a bit faster then with “Past the point of rescue”, a real toe-tapper with again Pat Crowley's squeezebox leading the way, and great sax solo from Carl Geraghty. The truly beautiful “The shadow” is a mournful ballad, carried on piano and keyboard, with some stunning cello work from Caroline Lavelle heightening the melancholy air of the song. Mary's simple and clear vocal floats above it all, neither strained nor lost in the music, but perfectly in control, using just the right amount of her considerable vocal power to relate the tale of, I think, either the infamous Bloody Sunday massacre, or the 1916 Rising, not sure which. Definitely a song about war or conflict of some sort in Ireland.
In contrast to this stark ballad, “Carolina Rua” is great fun, a bopper which just skips along, with a very simple lyric concerning a little girl called Carolina Rua (rua being the Irish for red, so she obviously has red hair). “Shuffle of the buckled” is another ballad, led by saxophone, and telling the story of the dispossessed and the poor, gentle guitar and percussion laying down the beat and accompanying the mournful sax.
And then we're at the standout track (though there are a few, this is far and away my favourite), the haunting “Columbus”. Piano-driven, with a simple vocal, double bass from Garvan Gallagher lends the song a sombre air, the percussion never more or less than the heartbeat of the piece. The piano is the true lifeblood of the song though, leading us in a gently meandering voyage across the sea and back, its notes echoing in our ears like the cries of far-off gulls, or the spray washing over the bow of the ship.
“Another day” lifts the somewhat introspective mood, and allows Noel Bridgeman on drums to have his head, after much restrained percussion in the last tracks, and he certainly sounds like he's enjoying being let loose. Geraghty has great fun on the sax too, his lines forming the centrepiece of the song. Even Mary sounds like she's letting off steam, but things slow down after that for “Fat valley of pain”, a track led by acoustic guitar and with some nice male backing vocals courtesy of Sinnott and Crowley, among others.
I could do without the cover of Aretha's “I say a little prayer for you”, even if Mary does an adequate job of it. I just feel she's a good enough songwriter that she need not be filling her albums up with covers. Well, maybe she just liked the song, or maybe it holds some special significance for her. That brings us to the rockiest and most commercial track on the album, another favourite of mine, the uptempo “Vanities”, with great guitar and keyboard, the drums again bopping, and again great vocal harmonies.
Mary Black is a real example of someone who doesn't need to shout or scream to make herself heard on her records. Even on the faster, louder tracks she's perfectly audible and understandable, just as she is when crooning on the ballads. Her voice is clear and pure, and has the power there to call on when it's needed. It's not surprising that this album made the crossover from Irish trad to commercial, as it's got some very poppy songs on it, most of them are catchy and there's hardly a bad track on it at all.
I would have preferred the album to end there, but there's one more track, the country/folk-tinged “The fog in Monterey”, which, while nice enough, doesn't really add that much to the album. As a result of this, “No frontiers” closes less strongly than it opened, and indeed, up to “Vanities” the high quality is maintained and, the cover aside, Mary and her band don't put a foot wrong. So it's a great pity that it's a weak ending, but it's a small quibble on a basically excellent album.
Kind of thing that makes you proud to be Irish!
TRACKLISTING
1. No frontiers
2. Past the point of rescue
3. The Shadow
4. Carolina Rua
5. Shuffle of the buckled
6. Columbus
7. Another day
8. Fat valley of pain
9. I say a little prayer
10. Vanities
11. The fog in Monterey