Album Review: King Cedar, Everything More, & Other Stories

There must be something in the Bangor water – Snow Patrol, Two Door Cinema Club, Foy Vance and Bobby Kildea all hail from the Co. Down seaside resort. You can now add King Cedar (Stephen Macartney to his mama) to that distinguished list: in Everything More, & Other Stories, he significantly adds to the Mourne Country canon.

Recorded in Los Angeles with Grammy winner Andre De Santanna, the producer’s jazz chops inflect the album with a fine minimalist touch. An effortless choice, you reckon, when working with an artist blessed with the pair of lungs that King Cedar boasts. Just a snatch of strings and lightly strummed guitar on ‘Falling On The Faultlines’, provides the space for the artist to deliver a delicious slice of chamber-folk.

Similarly, on forlorn ‘Holding Out For California’, it’s just a pair of guitars on a porch delivering a Woody Guthrie-style ballad of desperate longing. ‘The Last One To Leave’ is a woozy waltz of plucked instruments, low-key slide and subdued backing singers, reminiscent of George Jones, which is no mean achievement.

Lead single ‘Songbird On The Gray Hill’, in which Bob Dylan meets early Paul Simon, is just King Cedar clutching a 1940s Recording King guitar, singing his heart out, and it’s worth the price of admission alone. Elsewhere, there is the Father John Misty-like ‘Put Down The Gun, Leroy’ and the stellar country-rock number, ‘x Number Years’. Wonderful stuff.

8/10