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Nick Morgan and crew
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Concert
Review by Nick Morgan |
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| CHRISTY
MOORE WITH DECLAN SINNOTT
The Royal Festival
Hall, London, May 26th 2009
I
make no apologies for returning to see Christy
Moore and writing yet another overwhelmingly
positive review of his show. Moore is simply a
performer beyond compare, with a power and passion
to match the Patti Smiths, Neil Youngs or Nick
Caves. He’s in the space from the moment
he hits the first chords of ‘The ballad
of wandering Aengus’ (if you don’t
know, it’s a poem by W. B. Yeats) to the
last crash of a rollicking high speed ‘Lisdoonvarna’.
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| He
talks to himself, sings the lines of the next song
quietly to get the rhythm right in his head almost
before he finishes the previous one, and chides
and encourages accompanist Declan Sinnott like a
jockey would a horse: “Come on Deccy, that’s
right Deccy, steady there now, Deccy”. There
may be a set list, or a loose assembly of rehearsed
songs, but Moore seems to pluck them from the air,
a chord or two being the most Sinnott has to choose
the right guitar and start playing. “Hup,
hup, come on now, Deccy!”. And as he sings,
you sense he feels the fury, shares the pain, lives
the injustice of the victims of tyranny, prejudice,
religious hypocrisy, racism and political oppression
who inhabit so many of the songs. He’s an
angry man, and at times you feel glad you’re
not any closer. Even the absurdly funny songs, like
‘Casey’, about the controversial former
Bishop of Galway, Eamon Casey, as famous for refusing
to meet Ronald Reagan as a protest against his policies
in Nicaragua as he was for the sexual indiscretions
that saw him leave the church, somehow have an edge
of menace in Moore’s hands. |
|
Declan
Sinnott (L) and Christy Moore (R) |
| Moore’s
no slouch when it comes to writing songs himself,
but as this evening shows, he’s at his best
interpreting the work of others, and he certainly
has an eye, or should I say an ear, for a song that
might shine from the Christy Moore treatment. So
if you look at the material from his new album,
Listen, there’s only one solo composition
on there, and a couple of collaborations. Of these
he performs a cracker from Dublin composer Wally
Page, ‘Duffy’s cut’, about
the mysterious deaths of a group of Irish
railway labourers in Philadelphia in the early
nineteenth century, and the very lovely ‘Gortatagort’
(“John
Spillane wrote this about his mother’s
home, but it’s about everyone’s home”).
There’s also the title track of the album,
Hank Wedell’s ‘Listen’, Donagh
Long’s ‘China waltz’, and
the very moving ‘Does this train stop on Merseyside’,
written by Ian
Prowse. Some of these have been in Moore’s
repertoire for some time, and they were joined by
a host (at least twenty-five songs I counted) of
other older favourites, like brother Luka Bloom’s
‘City of Chicago’, Moore’s own
‘Viva la quinta brigada’, Page’s
‘Smoke and strong whiskey’, Jimmy
MacCarthy’s ‘Rode in’ and
‘Missing you’, and Moore’s powerful
interpretations of Dylan’s ‘The lonesome
death of Hattie Carroll’, and Joni Mitchell’s
‘The Magdalen launderies’. There was
even room for Ewan McColl’s wistful London
love-song ‘Sweet Thames flow softly’. |
| From
an almost perfect performance two moments in particular
stood out. The first was Moore’s incredibly
delicate version of ‘Beeswing’ (which
earned that highest of Irish compliments - “Fair
play to the man, fair play to Richard Thompson”).
The second, Moore’s unaccompanied ‘The
well below the valley’. “I started off
with a guitar playing songs by Bill Haley”
said Moore, “and then I saw the Clancy Brothers
and started singing that stuff. But it was when
I heard John Riley sing this song that my career
changed”. Using a bodhran (that most abused
of musical instruments) to set up the rhythm, Moore
sang this darkest of songs (incest, rape, child
murder and damnation) to a perfectly still, silent
and sold-out Royal Festival Hall. Simply sublime.
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Nick Morgan (photographs by Kate) |
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Listen
and watch: Christy Moore and Declan Sinnott
doing No time for love |
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Check
the index of all reviews:
Nick's
Concert Reviews
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There's nothing more down there... |
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