Covering herself in glory

Like most good ideas, it was a simple one. Andrea Corr, exhausted from nearly two decades of roadwork, recording and nonstop promo duties with The Corrs, and latterly as a solo artist, took a couple of years off to get married, pursue a parallel career as a stage actress, and generally rest, recuperate and recharge.

Enter John D. Reynolds, best known for his production work and rhythm science with Sinéad O'Connor, Jah Wobble, Brian Eno, Damien Dempsey and on his own Ghostland project. Reynolds, always an admirer of Corr's voice (weirdly enough, 'Faith In Love' from the Ghostland album Interview With The Angel sounded like the best song The Corrs never wrote) suggested that she might rekindle her appetite for music by way of interpretive therapy. The result, Lifelines, featuring compositions by Nick Drake, Daniel Johnston, Lou Reed, The Blue Nile, Harry Nilsson and others, sounds like the youngest Corr has finally found her musical home.
"He's such a special man and feels so lucky that he gets to do what he does as a job, it's inspiring to be with him," Corr said on a recent May afternoon in the Four Seasons Hotel in Ballsbridge. "He feels we have a blessed existence to get a chance to do what we love, and I believe that too. Through a mutual friend he got in touch and wanted to work with me, particularly my voice."
Unsurprising, given that Reynolds and his partner-in-crime Brian Eno are staunch
'voice' men.
"Completely. All those vocals on 'Pale Blue Eyes' and 'State Of Independence', that's Eno. He's mad into it, he goes to a vocal group at the weekend. It almost sounds doo-wop at the bottom, his bass range. Brian and John are really good friends, John walks with him every morning. Me and John called around to Brian one day and he started putting on records, just like when you get all excited putting records on for somebody else. I hadn't done that for years, I had lost that lovely moment. Anyway, he put on Donna Summer's 'State Of Independence', which I had listened to growing up, and he was saying it's probably the best choir ever on that Quincy Jones production: Michael Jackson,
Diana Ross..."
Corr's version possesses a devotional intensity she's rarely committed to record. But then, John D. Reynolds knows a thing or two about sacred singers, having once recorded Nusrat in the bathroom of his flat. Here it sounds like the song is singing the singer.
"It's strange to me, even listening to it," Andrea concedes. "It's interesting also, an Irish girl singing 'State Of Independence'. But I see it more as a prayer. I didn't even know I could sing that song. Having sung my own songs, with a band and on my own, with the whole history I have... When you've written it there's something in you that's going, 'I have to tell everybody this is a hit', subconsciously, while you're singing it. So where's the freedom? It comes from being in a popular band and the record company going, 'Where's the hit?' So it was even more freeing to sing these songs that I've loved, pivotal moments in my life, musically or emotionally."
Did her acting experience have any bearing on her new role as an interpretive singer?
"Yeah, I do think it's all related. I'd done Dancing At Lughnasa and then along the way I'd done Jane Eyre. There's not a new emotion to be found. There's not a new pain to be found. There's not a new sin to be found. Basically at this point in my life, sad but true, I – and you – we’ve felt all these emotions that are within these songs, and within plays, and within all art. All art is really pain turned into beauty. And these days, with celebrity culture, we just get the pain. We don’t get it made beautiful. And we don’t get it for any reason. And what we’re left with as the legacy is celebrity autobiographies instead of ‘Pale Blue Eyes’. And this is where it’s all going wrong!”
Interesting times indeed. Just when you think the media megaphone has reached all time low levels of pornification and dumbing down, it gets even crasser.
“And the consequence of that is, you have strangers asking other strangers the most personal and intimate questions and feeling like they have a right to know, and it’s the obligation of somebody who does music or acting or anything to tell strangers their intimate secrets, all because people are bleeding all over the telly. But all our standards have dropped, because if the paper is writing something, it’s because the audience wants it, and I think we as an audience need to think about that, because what we’re saying is, ‘This is what we want to read'. The point of music and film, Midnight Cowboy particularly, is that we're not alone in our loneliness. Everything that inspires me is always saying that."
In this listener's mind, the album's finest moment is a sublime version of Daniel Johnston's 'Some Things Last A Long Time' that transforms the song from a grieving for love lost to grieving for a lost loved one. It's a pretty devastating set closer.
"That's the thing about grief, isn't it? All these years later it's still as vivid. I had one of those times where I was guttural crying about my mother, almost the disbelief of, 'Has this happened?' all these years later. It's
quite incredible.
"Maybe sometimes you just need the dams to burst. It's the right last song. And it's the first song we did for the record. Did you watch the Devil & Daniel Johnston? His moments of lucidity... He says in it, 'I'm okay because I know wherever I go I have music in my heart'. And basically that is what epitomises this record. You know you're not alone in feeling something – and for that reason you're comforted by it. Pain isn't eloquent, it's not articulate, it's not flowery, it's absolutely raw. But art can come from it."
What would Doctor Freud say if he were to psychoanalyse her through this selection of songs?
"He'd probably say there's a bit too much focus on the tortured! I'm only thinking about it after the fact, but if you're thinking about what Freud would say, when you look at them: Lou Reed, heroin, Harry Nilsson, alcohol, Daniel Johnston, Nick Drake..."
It's definitely a record full of Orpheus and Eurydice tales. Roy Orbison's 'Blue Bayou' is the song of Adam exiled from the Garden. Nick
Drake's 'From The Morning' sounds like a mini-Creation myth.
"If you just visit that moment, like Nick Drake does, all you have is that moment, we don't see the future, the doom. We see the optimism. Particularly poignant coming from him. I think that often with songwriters, particularly really mentally troubled people, their song can be the most beautiful lucid moment they ever had, and that's why it resonates so loudly with us all, because I think that we all know we're vulnerable. There's only a little link in our brains that goes and we're that, and I think it's so fragile... What makes us listen and react to it is that it almost scares us."
Has she been there?
"Have I been there? No, I don't think so. I've obviously been sad. But I think I've always managed, pathetic as it is – ‘cos it can feel pathetic at times – to keep going, as we all do.”
Nothing pathetic about it.
“I know it’s not pathetic, but do you know that kind of way, when something terrible happens and you get a glimpse of yourself eating food and you go, ‘What the fuck?’ You know what I mean. It looks pathetic. That kind of objective moment you have: ‘I’m still eatin’ me food!’ (Laughs)"
The little engine that could.
"That's it!"

Lifelines is out now on AC Records.