REVIEWS

First Prize Bravery (Faction Records)

With tens of thousands of streams on Spotify, Sorcha Richardson has been releasing indie-pop earworms for years. An LP, though, always remained around the corner. Well, the waiting is over. Recorded over a month in LA with long-term producer Alex Casnoff, First Prize Bravery is about as coherent a debut album as you can get.

The album is about the minutiae of relationships and friendships, and what it means to negotiate these whilst being constantly on the move between her bases in New York and Dublin. As with any good situational drama, the joy is in the small details. On opener ‘Honey’ – a stripped-back, heart-onsleeve number – she sings about an encounter with a mysterious “you” that left her questioning everything. But it’s the imagery that wins you over: “I watched you move around the room/ You’re more magnetic than the moon/ That hangs above the balcony/ As you make your way back to me.”

The joy is that it all works. Every song, in fact, boasts stellar production. So catchy is the title track, it’s easy to overlook how exquisitely constructed it is. As the song commences, Richardson’s echoing vocals gradually emerge into the foreground. Thereafter, the tune folds layers of acoustic guitars, piano melodies and dreamy synths into a readymade pop hit. Everything, of course, is a foil to Richardson’s voice, which can only be described as laidback liquid gold. It draws you into these personal situations, and lays them out like an open diary, judgement-free. Bravery indeed. This is a superb record.

Hyperspace (Fonograf Records / Capitiol)

In the 25 years since Beck made good, he has been nothing if not interesting, and often quite brilliant. He’s on another winner here. Written and produced with Pharrell Williams, Hyperspace is a more subdued affair than 2017’s Colors. After the Eno-y ‘Hyperlife’, featuring the first of Beck’s superb vocals, ‘Uneventful Days’ continues along slightly ambient lines. It finds our man lamenting either a failing relationship, or the fleeting nature of inspiration. Either way, it’s a great single and sounds as au courant as today’s paper. Which makes the slide acoustic guitar on ‘Saw Lightning’ more jarring, but in a good way.

Meanwhile, love is the drug in the acoustic electronica of ‘Chemical’, and ‘See Through’ floats away on keyboard waves.

The title track features Terrell Hines on vocals, channelling André 3000, with another guest in the form of Chris Martin on ‘Stratosphere’. The latter could pass for one of Coldplay’s better moments, if that’s not a musical oxymoron. ‘Dark Places’ and ‘Star’ are more variations on the sonics that preceded them, and closer ‘Everlasting Nothing’ brings the acoustic guitar back-up – before the synths overpower – and it goes out with a glorious choral finish.

The production and the ever-present keyboards and treatments might sound cold on paper, but this is a warm record, combining the best of analogue and digital. A pretty good trick, but nothing less than you’d expect from the man. The Livelong Day (RIver Lea)

Few contemporary artists epitomise the integrity and authenticity at the heart of great folk music quite like Lankum. True to the title of their previous LP, the Dublin four-piece’s sound exists somewhere Between The Earth And The Sky – embracing both earthy, human grit and intangible, otherworldly textures. On The Livelong Day the group have re-emerged with a deepened sense of maturity and mortality, culminating in a project of uniquely raw intensity.

Lankum’s trademark organic ambience is brought to thrilling, sometimes terrifying, new heights, courtesy of their honorary fifth member, engineer and producer John “Spud” Murphy. Experimental instrumentation and playing include stunning appearances from the harmonium, mellotron, trombone and, most notably on ‘Hunting The Wren’, whatever else happened to be lying around the studio at the time.

Capturing the wily anarchy that’s always been an integral aspect of Irish folk music, the group handle inherited songs like ‘The Wild Rover’ and ‘The Dark Eyed Gypsy’ with immense respect – but they are never precious. As with their previous releases, ancient sounds and haunting drones are used as a vehicle to express modern issues and to explore the human condition – with ‘The Young People’, a rousing ballad about suicide, packing a slow-building, but ultimately devastating, blow.

Yet, despite fearlessly confronting these darker moments of our past and present, there’s also a deep, resounding love encased within the music throughout the album – with Radie Peat’s tenderly earthy vocals embodying the Irish landscape and people to stunning effect.

A remarkable and urgent reminder to celebrate the livelong days. Long live Lankum.

The new novel from master thriller writer John Le Carré leads the way in our round-up of the best new book releases.

John Le Carré (Viking)

John Le Carré’s latest novel revolves around an agent recently returned to London called Nat, who gets ensared in a web of intrigue encompassing Russian infl uence and Britain’s relationship with America. The author’s intention is to give two fi ngers to Brexit and Trump. Ed, who makes a badminton challenge at Nat’s beloved local club, becomes central to the whole affair. What is Jericho? Are Nat’s superiors corrupt? What’s the connection with Agent Pitchfork? And what about Valentia, the pride of Moscow centre, who appears to be chasing a big British fi sh? This cleverly current caper rattles along at a fi ne clip, with the requisite twists and turns, before reaching a satisfying end. Le Carré gives the impression that he could knock this kind of stuff out in his sleep, but that’s because he is the master.

B A R E F O O T PILGRIMAGE

Andrea Corr (Harper Collins)

Dealing with everything from her childhood upbringing in Dundalk, to the devastation at the passing of her father, to her travails in the music industry with her siblings, Andrea Corr’s memoir is an oddly lyrical, sometimes stream-of-consciousness, work of brilliance. Written as a series of poetic confessionals, Corr’s writing brings religion, mortality and family to the fore. She also weaves in poetry (her father’s as well as her own), and shares archive photographs from her family’s history. Sweet, sad, but ultimately inspiring, Andrea’s story isn’t just one that diehard fans of The Corrs will enjoy. It’ll ring true to anyone who has ever dealt with the complexities of familial loss.

In 2017, a routine network television investigation led Ronan Farrow to a story only whispered about: one of Hollywood’s most powerful producers was a predator, protected by fear, wealth, and a conspiracy of silence. As Farrow drew closer to the truth, shadowy operatives, from high-priced lawyers to elite warhardened spies, mounted a secret campaign of intimidation, threatening his career and weaponising an account of abuse in his own family. Catch And Kill is the untold story of the exotic tactics of surveillance and intimidation deployed by wealthy and connected men to threaten journalists, evade accountability, and silence victims of abuse. It’s also the story of the women who risked everything to expose the truth and spark a global movement.

Roe McDermott selects the latest films on Netflix, with highlights including Martin Scorsese’s acclaimed epic drama The Irishman – about mobster Frank Sheeran – and insightful drama Marriage Story.

While Scorsese’s new fi lm The Irishman, adapted from Frank Sheeran’s much-questioned memoir, tackles many of the director’s beloved themes such as power, corruption, loyalty, and guilt, The Irishman is propelled by an awareness of time, mortality and growth. As elderly Frank Sheeran (Robert De Niro) recounts his decades-long relationship with mob boss Russell Bufalino (Joe Pesci) and union leader Jimmy Hoffa (Al Pacino), Frank’s almost-deathbed ruminations feel like the preoccupations of a man Scorsese’s age. The director reckons with the questions that emerge from a lifetime in America, and a concept of masculinity that emerged from military life: be taciturn, be loyal, kill your enemies, never express feelings about it. Is it any wonder, Scorsese asks in this suitably icy fi lm, that these men returned from war to lives fi lled with effi cient violence, disposable relationships, and self-serving quests for money and power? The three leads put in superb performances. Caught between two powerhouses’ loyalties and agendas, De Niro has rarely been better, bringing a quiet stoicism to Frank, a man trying to do what he was told made a man. Though too long, the fi lm is still a powerful, melancholic character study of loneliness and old age – but never quite remorse.

Marriage Story captures not just the complexity of how a relationship ends in divorce, or what people learn about themselves while detangling their lives; it examines the divorce-industrial complex itself, and the ruthless process that often compounds division and heartbreak. Scarlett Johansson and Adam Driver star as Nicole and Charlie, an actress and theatre director with a young son. Nicole has instigated the split. A once-sought after It Girl who sacrifi ced fame and much of her creative voice to work in Charlie’s experimental theatre company, she feels stifl ed, lost and resentful. Charlie, whose controlling nature springs from oblivious selfi shness rather than malicious intent, reacts to the divorce like most things in life: with the naively arrogant belief that things will work out for him. Director Noah Baumbach balances our sympathies brilliantly. We identify with Charlie’s slow-burning realisation that divorce is brutal, and that his life will never be the same. But Nicole’s tourde-force confessions and conversations with her celebrity divorce lawyer (Laura Dern, sublime) reveal the layers of deeply gendered pain that Charlie’s cultivated cluelessness has caused. Nicole’s actions in divorce hurt Charlie; but his inaction in love hurt her. The superb lead performances and the story’s emotional wreckage are balanced by the consistent comic genius of Baumbach’s screenplay, and the brilliance of every supporting role. Exquisite, scorching and utterly humane.

In Brady Corbet’s audacious, explosive and knowingly ridiculous Vox Lux, Natalie Portman embraces and elevates the persona she created during her hilarious SNL rap sketch, playing a swaggering, mercurial pop star diva. After surviving a school shooting and writing a heartfelt ballad about the tragedy, the 14-year-old Celeste (initially played by Raffey Cassidy) becomes an overnight sensation, instantly plunged into the world of fame and excess. Not that she resists, but what teen can process that level of both trauma and media attention without becoming lost? And what nation? As Celeste becomes internationally famous, she ceases to be a person to the press and her fans, instead becoming a cipher and metaphor – which is where Portman comes in, replacing Cassidy’s quiet performance with one of exaggerated indulgence. The adult Celeste is all excess – constantly covered in glitter, her New York accent almost a pantomime, expressing every emotion under the sun in 10 seconds. Selfi sh, abrasive and needy, she’s all toddleresque id. She has explosive, sobbing temper tantrums before being asked to publicly provide insight into mass violence highlights – a process that reveals the absurdity of this sort of fame, and how it simultaneously spotlights and erases people. A fascinating, darkly funny, operatic examination of fame, in Vox Lux, Corbet’s philosophy echoes Celeste’s: “You wanted a show. I’ll give them a show.”

Midweek Breaks (Sunday to Thursday inclusive) With NIR Travel Staying at the Harcourt Hotel Fashionable City Centre Hotel close to Grafton St and St. Stephen’s Green. Your break includes: Return rail from any NIR Station. 2 nights Bed & Breakfast. 3 Course Early Bird Dinner on one evening in the elegant 1900 (Nineteen Hundred) Restaurant. Feb £124 / March / April £159 / May to September £182

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