Tony Kirwan's 'Breakdown': a soundtrack to the messiness of life

Sometimes performing to a crowded pub, no matter how good the singer and the band, doesn't really show up the quality of an artist, writes Brian Byrne. It's not worse, it's just different. So when you've been used to listening to someone with the backing track of a couple of dozen competing conversations, clinking glasses and shouted requests for drinks, it's quite a shift to sit down in the peace of home with a CD of the same performer.

That's how it is with the latest album from Newbridge singer-songwriter Tony Kirwan — Breakdown. Different. Big different. And revealing, because listening on one's own to a CD provides a better chance of actually hearing the lyrics. When they are the original writings of the performer, they're a window into their soul.

Breakdown is Tony Kirwan's second album, and could well be described as the soundtrack to a romantic's life, in his own words 'written as I thought, over a six-year period'. There are 15 tracks, 15 stories mostly of love, much of it lost, or of friendships possibly much stronger than ever could be a romantic relationship. Someone wise may once have said, life is messy. The messiness of relationships, the angst and forlorn hopes and losses they can bring, are all scattered through this collection of words and notes from a longtime local singer who never actually wrote a song until he was 50.

The style throughout is generally country, but with a good underpinning of other genres. In the middle of the collection, with its definite change in accent and tone, Full Steam Ahead Now is a very Irish look at a night out in a pub with friends which nicely counterpoints the mood of unrequited, lost, or remembered love.

I suspect that Tony Kirwan doesn't always appreciate how good a voice he has. But his friend Colm Cahill certainly does. Colm brought that out in his excellent recording and production of this album, and also contributed some quite superb instrumentation himself. He also did the photography for the CD's cover, which was then made the most of by graphic designer Fran McCormack.

There's probably at least one song for everyone on this collection. Me, I was particularly taken with Just Another Day In Paradise because of the brilliantly balanced production, the thought-provoking River Kwai Soldier which came out of the singer's own time in Thailand, and Material Things and Plastic People which to my ears is a cautionary observation on the current era of influencers.

Breakdown is available through Tony Kirwan's new website or from a number of the venues in mid-Kildare where he regularly plays — for Kilcullen, it's available in The Spout. Check it out.

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