Omschrijving

Celtic, traditional, folk.

His umpteenth album and again completely solo, this leans more to the middle of the road side of Irish country a la classic names like Brendan Shine and Johnny McAvoy, but, a sort of companion piece to Songs From Small Hotel Rooms By The Sea, that is just part of its easy-going charm.

These are mostly warm and wistful love songs, though it opens with 'The Make-Believe King Of Tara' which tells the tale of a little boy who climbs a small hill near to his farmstead home and, in his imagination, thinks of it as the Hill of Tara, an ancient ceremonial and burial site near Skryne in County Meath, which tradition identifies as the inauguration place and seat of the High Kings of Ireland. Imaging himself as king, looking down at the countryside below, he wonders if, in years to come, others will follow in his footsteps and see it as their kingdom too.

'When Love Runs Out On You' is a lilting post break-up swayalong, though unusually it's the one whose been dumped who's imaging why and how the other will feel "when there's no more me and you". In contrast, the narrator as an artist, 'Dmitri's Violin' uses a character sketch of a local eccentric for a reflection on a past love ("you were so patient while I painted you, emerging from the sea/While I struggled to find colours to show how much you meant to me/But now I can look at Aphrodite, as the afternoons draw in/And I swear I've seen her smile at the sound of Dimitri's violin"), though there's no actual violin featured, ending with a hint of mazurka, the same emotional palette informing the Irish honky tonk of the poignant 'Table Number Three', our protagonist regularly returning to the same café spot (presumably on the sea front as per the album title) he and a lover shared on their first date. Elsewhere, bruised hearts and loss take on similar lyrical and musical fashion on 'Tangled And Torn Up', the jogalong metaphorical growing old ghost story 'The Grey Stone House' ("many years later, when I was all grown/I owned a solitary house built of stone/With a garden and few scattered apple trees too/Which my children learned to climb on their own/Now with the passing of time, somehow, I'm the only one in this old empty house now/And at night-time I wander, in the dark and the gloom, like a ghost, haunting each lonely room") and the growing older and funerals backdrop of 'Any Other Way' ("St Peter, if you hear me, please save a space for me/It must be getting kind of crowded high up there/Seems like all my lifelong friends are disappearing recently/I look, but I can't see them anywhere"). As balance, the sprightly scampering 'Fine French Wine' takes a more upbeat tone ("what I want is a glass or two of fine French wine, what I want is somewhere I can just call mine/But what I'll need in my little place is to see your ever-friendly face, 'cause all I really want is you") and 'What In The World' (Jim Reeves might have recorded this) is about love found.

It ends with the musically lively six-minute 'Prince Of Piccadilly (The Ballad Of Billy Bold)', the tale of a Southwark-born ex-soldier fallen between the cracks of society ("Billy's face was very well known from Marylebone and Bow/To the cells of West End Central, 27, Saville Row/"There's no place quite like home", is the saying we all know/But if you've got no home, then you have no place to go") who takes the singer, another homeless person, under his wing, the message being "that stranger in a doorway, seeking shelter from the cold/Is not some no-name nobody, he could be me or Billy Bold", a reminder that Moore is a storyteller of some note.

Tracks:
01. The Make-Believe King of Tara
02. When Love Runs Out On You
03. Dimitri's Violin
04. Table Number Three
05. Tangled And Torn Up
06. What In The World_
07. The Grey Stone House
08. Fine French Wine
09. Any Other Way
10. Prince Of Piccadilly (The Ballad Of Billy Bold)

Staat er compleet op, 10% pars mee gepost. Met zeer veel dank aan de originele poster. Laat af en toe eens weten wat je van het album vindt. Altijd leuk, de mening van anderen. Oh ja, MP3 doe ik niet aan.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9_Br5KUK7ng