Recorded mostly at home in Montréal and in art galleries and hotel rooms by the quarter-Irish, one-woman cottage industry that is Emm Gryner, Songs of Love and Death is a brave selection of Irish pop and rock songs that thankfully avoids the obvious and gives some perhaps forgotten gems an overdue turn around the block.
This sensitively under-produced album opens with a version of ‘Forget Georgia’ that follows the Something Happens blueprint, right down to Alan Byrne’s bass lines, but is hampered by a clunking drum machine and handclaps. She reworks The Corrs’ ‘Breathless’ into an, er, breathless, doom-laden, piano-led ballad and transforms ‘Dearg Doom’ from Celtic rock stomper into vintage indie-rock. She also makes worthwhile covers of Thin Lizzy’s ‘Running Back’ and Ash’s ‘Shining Light’. Therapy?’s ‘Nowhere’ becomes a gritty backporch foot-tapper and her imaginative use of the African kalimba shines new light into Gilbert O’Sullivan’s ‘Nothing Rhymed’. The Undertones’ ‘Julie Ocean’ in Gryner’s hands becomes a sumptuous and gritty love-ballad. Kate McGarrigle joins in on banjo for The Virgin Prunes ‘Bau-Dachong’, but mostly it’s a few muso mates plus Gryner’s robust voice and harpsichord, clarinet and electric guitars.
With Irish artists currently falling over themselves to record covers of international standards, it’s ironic that a Canadian would decide to record an album of Irish covers and remind us of the cache of gems gathering dust in the vault. There’s a lesson in there somewhere.