Invisible Walls

SHARON MURPHY

Invisible Walls

Invisible Walls is the stuff of cracked larynxes and brittle bones. Storyboarded by tales of exclusion and rejection, this is life Jim, but not as most of us know it.

Growing up in the ironically monochrome world of west Galway, a black Irish orphan, Sharon Murphy would appear to have more reason than most to veer towards the autobiographical in this, her debut album. She has been lazily boxed with the likes of Tracy Chapman and Joan Armatrading, but with a larynx that stretches and bends like the Healy Pass, she bears closer kinship with Toni Childs.

The opener, ‘I Didn’t Know’ is an articulate scene-setter, bespeaking of a walled childhood (in an orphanage) mercifully demolished by Murphy’s entry into the outside world at the age of 16. Her acoustic arrangements are guitar-driven, but languid, bearing the mark of someone comfortable enough with her material to let it do its own talking, without drowning in over-embellishments.

Likewise ‘How Long’ is a gem of understatement with those velveteen vocals upfront, where they belong, Bruno Staehelin’s drums and Steve Hanks’ sax buffering without muffling the rawness of the storyline. As for the backing vocalists, Rosanna McCafferty and Helen Mulroy, their lightness of touch is a pitch-perfect foil to Murphy’s deeper, naked tones.

Like countless debuts, Invisible Walls is overwhelmingly autobiographical, but somehow manages to strike a chord that’s as universal as it is personal. “I walk in the world where outcasts have no name/It is there my deep spirit sings/My heart opens, a love begins”. Ostensibly the story of her racial difference, these lines could equally recount a tale of illness (AIDS experiences), ethnicity (Drumcree, anyone?) or even disability. Less the stuff of old photo albums, than of today’s newsreels.

Weaknesses, if they are to be found, lurk quietly in the background. There is a similarity in the tone struck on all 13 tracks that shouts of a neophyte, unused to exploring other perspectives, but this will very likely evolve with experience. The arrangements might equally benefit from the touch of a stranger with the intention of shaping each song’s identity a tad more definitely. But such quibbles fail to undermine the vitality of Invisible Walls.

One for the late-night headphones.

Siobhán Long