Album Review: Brendan Graham, The Arrow of Time

It’s not unusual for a non-performing songwriter with a trophy cabinet brimful of hits to reach a stage in life when the urge to record his or her own versions becomes irresistible. This is where we find ourselves with Brendan Graham, whose songs you know, even if you don’t know you know them.

So far so normal. But there’s a startling, raw intimacy to these fresh recordings right from the off, with the celebratory Eurovision sheen of ‘Rock ‘n’ Roll Kids’ replaced by a stark wistfulness that evokes memories of early Tom Waits or latterday Nick Cave, as Graham’s bare-bones voice and piano, with a little help from original singers Paul Harrington and Charlie McGettigan, strip the song back to the emotional bedrock from whence it came.

That same courageous and disarmingly honest approach is applied to his other Eurovision winner ‘The Voice’ and, in a spoken word treatment, to the ubiquitous ‘You Raise Me Up’. The approach unveils a different kind of pathos in those songs heretofore unsuspected and brings a fireside intimacy to the affair.

Indeed Graham’s spoken-word treatment of the former – also featuring the star who took it to the top of the Eurovision tree, Eimear Quinn – reveals their poetic depth as never before. A suitably reverent production by Cathy Jordan collaborator Feargal Murray, and his careful use of top musicians as required, enhances and even challenges one’s memories of such impressive songs as ‘The Deepening Silence’, the gorgeous ‘I Want To Go To Venice’ and the Leonard Cohen-esque ‘The Songman’ and ‘What If There’s No Tomorrow’.

Some of these songs have travelled the globe in recordings by artists of the stature of Aretha Frankin, Josh Groban, Westlife and Johnny Mathis – but Brendan Graham has worked his own personal magic in these recordings. His no-hiding-place vocal performances bring them back home where they belong as if they’d never been away. A superb addition to the canon.

8.5/10