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Review: 'Sheehy, Michael J.'
'The Crooked Carty Sings'   

-  Label: 'Lightning Archive/Bandcamp'
-  Genre: 'Folk' -  Release Date: '3.12.21.'

Our Rating:
This is the latest solo album by Michael J Sheehy of Miraculous Mule or solo with The Hired Mourners. This time around he has reworked and refashioned a set of classic of folk songs and murder ballads into a typically dark look at the soul of man.

The album opens with Green Grows The Laurel that's played very slowly and with Michaels rich vocals almost whispering this tale into out ears so we can immerse ourselves in this dark reflection at how he sounds so much sadder than Sandy Denny did singing this song.

Blow The Candle Out has a very widescreen take on a song The Kingston Trio had a hit with, this sounds like it has a Burt Bacharach arrangement but with JJ Cale playing desert blues guitar over the top as Michaels hushed vocals Blow The Candle Out.

Phoenix Island is a wonderfully careworn duet with Susan Rhatigan, that reminds me a lot of the Monica Queen and Chris Connelly's songs they sing together, this is quite starkly beautiful as a seduction.

What Will We Do When We Have No Money could easily be a song for our pandemic times as much as it is usually sung by a woman who may have to sell herself to feed her family and now it's more will Michael be prepared to pimp out his love if things get even tougher than they already are, please rush over to Bandcamp to buy this album to take the decision out of his hands.

Am I Born To Die comes straight out of the Sacred Harp song book, sadly I don't know what number it is, this is far slower and more contemplative than The Sacred Harp version I have that was recorded in a wooden church in the American South. As the song slowly pulses and has the insistent long organ like tones to contemplate death too.

Lily Of The West may be about a girl from Liverpool but for me Lily of The West will always be my Grandma who was brought up in Notting Hill, I have vague memories of my dad singing this to his mother in law in the early 70's. This version is more desert blues than the Greenwich Village folk standard that Dylan and Joan Baez both sang, as this sorry tale unfolds in its new surroundings.

What Put The Blood is a twisted murder ballad that has been re-worked musically so it sounds almost like a gospel song about fratricide and a mothers reaction to the violence she witnesses. As he carefully admonishes the murderer with the oft repeated threat of What will you do when your father comes home.

The album closes with Love Is Kind To The Least Of Men that has Susan Rhatigan reading a short prayer by way of intro over some sea shore sounds as this opens out into a full on hymnal for the aching hearts of troubled men and women.

Find out more at https://michaeljsheehy.bandcamp.com/album/the-crooked-carty-sings https://www.facebook.com/michaeljsheehy

  author: simonovitch

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