Graham Reid | | 1 min read
I'll Wait Outside For You
Bookending this fourth album with traditional Irish tunes (I Know Who is Sick and Down by the Glenside) and with a penetrating cover of Tim Buckley's I Must Have Been Blind before the midpoint, the remarkable Brigid Mae Power spans the ancient and recent past but brings them into the present in the context of personal songs like the airy Counting Down about being an absent parent while touring: “Every step I take has meaning when I’m getting you to school or your swim lessons at the pool, counting down how long it will be 'til I'm home”.
Like many Irish musicians she keeps alive the name and memory of those who have gone before, here on Ashling, a tribute to – and lament for – the 23-year old teacher and Irish fiddler Ashling Murphy who was murdered in January 2022 while out jogging after work.
This is the personal as political as it addresses violence against women: “There’s been many, many before. Many women like Ashling of Tullamore. And today we mourn them all, and we pray let there be no more”.
If this sounds bleak, Power's weightless folk delivery here and elsewhere is sometimes couched in lightlydelic dreaminess (The Waterford Song, I'll Wait Outside For You with steel guitar and a lyric with a pointed opinion) which assures the album doesn't sink under its own earnestness.
But this is serious, considered material from Power.
The title track may seduce with her lyrical delivery and its deliberately cloudy-like melody but she's damn clear: “You threw out those thoughts with scorn. And for those who didn’t agree you had to use force. But behind the scene there’s a real being. Are you teaching your children to be this mean?”
Brigid Mae Power's well is very deep indeed.
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You can hear and buy this album at bandcamp here
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