The Mighty Avon Jnr. - Hold Everything Dear (2018) EN

Music project by the Irish artist Daragh McCarthy has finally released an album that had been created for almost 20 years (its opening track, Rapture Me Now, was released as a single in 1999). And it's wonderful news because Hold Everything Dear makes an utterly interesting composition with live instruments and poetry citing in the foreground.

Poetry is the correct word for McCarthy's lyrics. It's both intriguing and unsettling, one of my favourite fragments being certainly: "I asked you: Is that cigar smoke or teargas? You said, What’s the difference?” from Steeplejack Field Holler. From the music perspective, we deal with complex compositions in which the main part may be taken by either guitar drones (as in the monumental and absolutely beautiful Underground) or more traditional instruments, as for example trumpets.

Besides all of this, there are also other, non-obvious ideas from the multimedia artist's head: there are choir sounds (Wedding Chair), there are folk singing in the backgrounds, there are samples in Japanese (Jibutsu No Fokuroa), or a very much danceable chorus in Cobra Dear Heart. As stated here, the project makes  music that is so complex and complicated that no wonder that McCarthy calls is a "one-man band with a hundred members". 

Hold Everything Dear costs 7 EUR.

Check: Underground

Country: Ireland

Genre: spoken word post-folk

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