Juxtaposed with you

Yes, on the face of it our cover stars are an odd couple. She’s statuesque and black and made like a model. He’s white, affable and a strapping Offaly lad. She’s urban, he’s country. She’s on Atlantic, he’s a self-determined indie. She’s a 21-year old debutante, he’s a 30-something long distance strummer.

But there’s no art to find the mind’s construction in the face. Edmund ‘Mundy’ Enright and Laura Izibor have an awful lot in common. Both survived music industry snags involving migrating A&R men at an early age before engineering miraculous escapes. Both found exposure through major movies (Mundy contributed ‘To You I Bestow’ to Romeo & Juliet, Laura wrote ‘Shine’ for The Nanny Diaries). Both write songs that recall Leonard’s line, “My heart’s like a blister/From doin’ what I do” and are given to conducting self-taught heart surgery on the operating table of the longform album. Hers is called Let The Truth Be Told. His is entitled Strawberry Blood. And both artists are plainspoken, unpretentious and immensely likeable individuals.
“I just find Mundy hilarious,” Izibor says a couple of hours after they’ve met for the first time at the Hot Press cover shoot on a bright Tuesday in late April. “His whole demeanour. I just kept cracking up. I really enjoyed the shoot, I laughed my head off, and I really needed that lately, I haven’t had a good laugh in a while.”

Still sporting eyeliner, Mundy’s in rather more reflective humour when we catch up with him over a bowl of mushroom soup in Leonard’s Corner at lunchtime. At 33, the first-time father of a four-week-old girl (Eden Alice was born on April 1), Mundy is big on the rebirth right now, and his fourth studio album Strawberry Blood, produced by Joe Chester, is a collection of battle-scarred, reflective – and frequently quite moving – songs about love and childhood.
“As a whole piece I think it’s the strongest thing I’ve done,” he says in a matter-of-fact manner that belies the cliché of the statement. “I really have to give Joe a lot of credit. I suppose he treated it as if it was a human, he was very sensitive to every single sound.”
Indeed, Chester has given Mundy’s songs a wealth of detail and a sort of effervescent gleam. In a myspace interview, the producer admitted that the pair’s primary motivation was to create something ‘beautiful’.
“You wouldn’t hear anyone saying that about an album,” Mundy admits. “A lot of people want to make an album that kicks ass, or rocks, or is light-hearted or dark or indie – you never hear someone say they want to make a beautiful record.”
And it is. Songs like the title track and ‘I Miss The Country’ are closely observed evocations of childhood, often using food (ice cream cones, cheese and onion crisps, rhubarb tart) and the Proustian device of smell as a potent memory trigger.
“Nostalgia is very easy to write about,” Mundy says. “When you’re feeling nostalgic it flows back to you. I wrote ‘I Miss The Country’ in three minutes, and I thought it was probably too naïve a song to write, but it’s kind of inspired by Lucinda Williams, because she doesn’t give a shit what she writes about, she just writes. She says, ‘Don’t pay for a fancy funeral.’ She says, ‘Are you alright?’ Very simple songs.
“And I just thought, ‘You know what? I miss the country today, I have to go home, I miss the smell of brown bread, I miss the rhubarb tart, I remember spearmint kisses when you’re children.’ I woke up one morning missing all these things, and I wrote it and there it was, and it turns out it’s a lot of people’s favourite.”
This evocation of childhood memory as mythological haven for the troubled grown-up soul culminates in ‘Avalon’, a song that Mundy didn’t quite understand until long after he’d written it.
“‘Avalon’ just came into my head, a subconscious thing, it’s a complete ramble,” he explains. “It’s one of those days you wake up and everything’s fucked, you feel broken, and I just kept singing, ‘Avalon – I’ll move on’, and it turns out the fields of Avalon are where the soldiers used to go back to in battle when they were wounded, but I never knew that. I remember Jack L said it was something to do with the Knights of the Round Table, the Holy Grail passed through there.”
Clarity, Mundy concedes, is one of the marks of any songwriter’s maturation. Once he gets beyond wanting to be seen as a hotshot young poet-seer, and spurred on by a growing awareness of his own mortality, he gets right down to saying what really matters.
“Well, I don’t have a whole lot of time to make up another language,” he says with a chuckle. “I’m nearly halfway through my life. I’ve made the template of what I am, it’s a bit late to be changing it now. I may as well just speak my own language. And lots of other people understand me.”
Cue songs like ‘The Corn And The Orange Sun’, with its Dylanish kiss-off “Cheers, doll”, or ‘Love Is A Casino’, a duet with Shane MacGowan, or the post break-up psychosis of ‘Waiting For The Night To Come’ with its nod to Stealers Wheel. Mostly, Strawberry Blood is the sound of a songwriter who’s had a bit of paint taken off of him.
“Yeah, there’s a bit of rust in there,” he says. “I fuckin’ aged, I mean it took five years. I was 28 when I made Raining Down Arrows. I stressed out a lot about this album because the live album was meant to bridge a gap, and the bridge was nearly too fuckin’ strong, and then the gap just got bigger. There was one point about two years ago where I didn’t have enough songs for this album, and I was having a little freak-out over it, y’know?”
He also had his heart broken in the interim, by the sounds of it.
“Yes, I’ve had my heart broken a few times in between. They’re not all about the same time, cos on ‘Head Over Heels’ I’m brand new in love, in ‘Pepper In My Dreams’ I’m completely not in love with anyone and in ‘Corn And The Orange Sun’ I’m saying goodbye.”
These songs testify that as we get older, rather than accumulating a thicker hide, we become rawer and more vulnerable.
“Yeah, yeah, absolutely. I think I definitely was hard when I was 16, I could take anything, there was no woman in the world who could hurt me too much. I never had fear. But I experienced panic attacks for the first time when I was 19. It’s been coming in and out of my life, so they really affected my music. About four or five years ago I had to go on stage and sing about things that were very personal and…”
It was like ripping the scab off.
“Every time. I had to go out and get strong myself in order to be able to sing my songs, which is weird. I remember a girl said to me one night after a gig, ‘You have to wait until people own those songs before you get rid of them.’ So when the live album came out I had this release of fear. A lot of people became familiar with the songs and it became nearly more about them, what they related to. You gotta really be careful because there is magic involved in lyrics and writing and painting and everything, there is a magic that could tempt your fate. You could write a song that says, ‘I’m gonna die at 54’ and it’ll always haunt you.”
Rosanne Cash wrote about this in her New York Times blog last year. Not that songs are prophetic so much as they allow our subconscious to speak to us of the ugly inevitable, things our daytime mind might know are imminent but doesn’t want to acknowledge.
“Absolutely. Your subconscious is tapped into somewhere else. And that’s where creation comes from. And if you want to try and test it out it’s up to you, but you gotta be careful.”
Did he seek any help for the panic attacks?
“I went to see a kind of acupuncture guy. We had long deep talks, and then it turned out that he was an egomaniac, I had to listen to him talk about himself. So his magic spell wore off very quickly, and I became my own master. His whole vibe was that we’re warriors and that we go out there and it’s a battle. And that was wrong. I didn’t need to feel I was going out to battle, I needed to feel I was going out to share. Christy Moore told me the same thing: you go out to share your songs with people. We can’t take on all those people. So this guy who was supposed to be a genius was telling me to put on my shield and paint red Xs over people. I remember playing Marlay Park to 10,000 people or whatever, and certain people I didn’t want to see in the audience, with my mental paintbrush I was painting red X’s all over them. Fuckin’ bizarre man.
“One of the biggest things I’ll speak about is I cancelled a gig up in Co. Meath. I walked offstage after five songs. For a whole day I was having a panic attack. We drove to the venue and there was nowhere for us to stay, one bedroom, eight of us in the crew, a town festival on at the time. Nowhere for me to chill out, I had no car, the van was full of gear. And I called my doctor before I went on stage and said, ‘Listen, what do I do here? I’m freaking out. The gig is sold out, I have to walk through the crowd to get to the stage, and it’s in a nightclub. I can’t do the gig.’ I used to always carry a placebo, so to speak, I had a valium in my wallet. And he says, ‘Just take that, and worst comes to the worst, if you can’t perform, just tell them.’ “And after five songs I just told them I’d be back when I was better and I’d play a free gig. And that has to be the thing that healed me, the fact that I could say ‘no’. Cos I’ve always felt trapped up there. If you’re sick and you work in the bank you can get a day off. But if you’re in the entertainment industry and you pull a sickie, you can lose your job very quickly. So that was one of the most healing things, was to say, ‘I’m normal.’”
It’s fascinating how much of the mind’s stability is determined by the state of the body.
“Well, your adrenal gland… that was the whole thing: I was going off to do gigs, and what should have been adrenalin was turning into panic because it was so strong. I couldn’t eat. I lost a lot of weight. I looked really good, but the weird thing is you look great when you’re having a shit time. I was getting loads of compliments from people, but I used to go to the gym to make myself hungry, and I have to say, the more physically better shape I got in, the more the mental shape was better. A woman at the chemist’s said to me, ‘Young Enright, I didn’t recognise you, you’ve put on a lot of weight… but it’ll stand to you when you get sick!’”
“I put my foot to the floor heavily through my 20s,” he continues. “I had a great time, but I also ran myself into the ground many times. And I’ve no regrets, because I do think that you’re always going to experience turbulence in your life, and it’s good to be aware of it, so I’d hate to have to go through it for the first time again. At least I can see it comin’.”
How did imminent parenthood affect his anxiety attacks?
“I was really fuckin’ scared about that for a long, long time. I was scared of who it would be with and would it turn out all right. I’m an awful worrier, I pile up a mountain of negatives, and a little hill of positives, but I knew that was one of the reasons I was putting my foot on the gas, because I’d be getting to this point.
“You can get very self-absorbed when you’re trying to pave your career as an artist of some description. And sometimes if you’re self-absorbed, there’s nothing to fuckin’ absorb! The weird thing is, everyone’s been saying to me, ‘Have you written loads of songs about the baby yet?’ and I’m like, ‘No, but I’m starting to write songs about my parents.’ Now I’m realising everything that they’ve given me and done for me. Most of the people who’ve interviewed me have said, ‘Is it going to fuck up your career, is it going to change things?’ Is it going to change things? I hope so. Is it gonna save my life? I hope so.”
A couple of hours and one cab ride later we’re in the Morgan Hotel having a cappuccino with our other cover star. Laura Izibor looks like Nubian royalty and talks with a working class Dub accent. She’s also one of the most self-possessed 21-year-olds you'll ever meet, posing for photos like Cleopatra-era Nina Simone in the throne of a chair that dominates the Morgan Hotel restaurant. We meet here on two occasions, almost three months apart, in January and April. Blackberries buzz in her presence; she has the air of one being groomed.
“In the past few months discussions have come up about image and fashion,” she admits, “and I suddenly turned around and went, ‘I don’t want to be a fashion icon.’ And they’re like, ‘Everyone wants to be a fashion icon.’ ‘Nah, they don’t!’ My focus is music. It’s lovely to look well and feel like a young woman, and I can pick out what I want cos I know what makes me feel beautiful, but when you’re trying to get somebody else’s version of beautiful and what’s hot and what’s number one, then it just becomes this panic.”
On the day of the Hot Press shoot, Izibor’s just back off a US tour with India Arie, where she’d been performing acoustic shows to 2000-capacity venues. The stripped down format, she says, allowed her to reconnect with the essence of the songs on her five-years-in-the-making debut Let The Truth Be Told, an impressively polished and assured album that contains at least four modern soul classics, including ‘Don’t Stay’, ‘If Tonight Is My Last’ and ‘What Would You Do’.
Ask her how she’s feeling and she says this:
“I’m just very here, very now, today, just enjoying what I’m doing. Especially the tour, which was so fulfilling. That girl India has reminded me of who I am again, and that you do things at your pace, cos you’ll get the right people to come to you.”
There’s also the small matter of her meeting Stevie Wonder, of whom she does an uncanny impression.
“He knew my song,” she beams. “He played it on his radio show. I sang for him, on his keyboard, live at the station. We spent about three hours together. The guy that runs the whole show and is a DJ brought me in before I met him and pretty much gave me a prep speech. He said, ‘He may sing, and when he starts talking don’t be hypnotised, you need to be active in this conversation. Stand your ground, don’t be intimidated.’ Singing for him was crazy, because throughout the whole song I was thinking, ‘Stevie Wonder’s right there! I’m playing his keyboard!’ When we walked in initially he was singing my single, ‘From My Heart To Yours’, and he was like, ‘That’s you! Play that, baby girl!’ He’s such a warm spirit. And when he holds your hand, he holds it for about ten minutes.”
So is there anybody else left for her to meet?
“Roberta Flack.”
It might well happen. But right now, as the mighty Atlantic Records publicity machine cranks up a gear, Izibor’s concentrating on remaining calm and, corny as it sounds, present. In order to enjoy experiences like meeting Stevie Wonder, or touring with John Legend or India Arie, she needs to chill out but not disconnect, savouring but not smothering the moment. She’s got no time for overthinking things.
“Even with love,” she says. “When I was younger I used to have this ideal guy, American, this and that, and I was missing out on a world of possibility. Whereas when you take away that shield, then love becomes so much more exciting because it could be anybody, from anywhere. One of the guys I dated was like a grungey rocker, smaller than me, from the country, over here, and I swear to god, out of all the guys I’ve ever dated I’ll never forget him because he was the first guy that taught me that I didn’t give a fuck what we looked like together. He was just so free-spirited and so much fun.”
So what compels her towards a person?
“I think now I’m starting to see a bit of a common streak. With men in particular, they have to have some sort of passion in their life. Whether it’s an instrument, or their work, something bigger than any girl could fit. I hate a guy who makes his whole world about you and eats, sleeps and breathes you. That’s not attractive to me. I like there to be something bigger than him that is his passion, that when he’s on his own he does this. That to me is just beautiful.”
Yeah, but it drives insecure people nuts.
“I know, I’ve lost friends over having a focus in my life and something that makes me content. But if he’s a painter, he has to build something from scratch, he takes care of it, hangs it up, puts a lot of time and dedication and care into it. A musician practices and learns the songs and is fulfilled by what he does. I dated a musician and I remember just loving watching him play. That was such a kick for me. I loved watching him in his element. A lot of people don’t have that.
“So that’s the one common thread I’m starting to see. I’m drawn to people that have something in their life that creatively fulfils them. You can trust them. It’s real. It’s kind of like that thing about not getting married. That person is there not because of this piece of paper, but because they woke up today and they said, ‘I want to be with you cos I really like how you made me feel yesterday, and I want to spend tomorrow with you as well.’”
Just as Izibor comes across as an old soul in a young body, Let The Truth Be Told applies old soul and Stax and Muscle Shoals tenets to a modern hip-hop and R&B inflected sound. The feeling one gets from the record is of earned rather than received wisdom. What kind of childhood experiences went into these songs?
“Well, they’re… sealed off,” she says. “But there was… (I had a) single parent, and I’ve a lot of friends with single parents, and you don’t just leave it to your mother, you have to help, you have to grow up and carry each other, because I come from a family of five. I’m the second youngest. But I think I’ve always been a little bit more grown up.”
Did she her inherit her sense of focus from her mother?
“Yeah, I was thinking about that the other day. I used to see her struggle so much and have to work so many jobs, and I was like, ‘Right, I’m good at this.’ And it was partly that dream as well: ‘I want to get her out of here, I want to buy her a house and look after everyone.’ But I also bloody loved it. I just wasn’t a street kid. I had my friends and I’d go to them at the weekends, but I was always really content on my own buzz. Even now, a lot of girls still won’t eat lunch on their own. In fact, that’s something I’m having to try to adjust to, not having that time to myself anymore.”
Where did she grow up?
“Rathfarnham. Whitechurch.”
Was she the only black kid in her class?
“Absolutely. I come from a family of three white siblings that are older than me, then I’ve one brother who has the same parents, and recently I’ve a three-year-old brother, who’s from my father and his marriage.”
So can she remember feeling different from the start of school?
“I’m sure I was conscious of it, I can’t really remember too much to be honest with you, maybe there’s a hint of a feeling, but definitely as I got a bit older a few names would be called and it was hard. It was one of those things where just having two or three black friends would have (helped), just that little bit of common ground with someone. But when I fell into music, that’s when that aching, that ‘Oh my god, there’s no one here’ feeling went away. When I found R’n’B and soul music, I just felt this connection that really eased me, and when I’d see videos I’d say, ‘Oh, they’re like me.’
“And then especially when I went to New York at 16 and made so many black friends and mixed-race friends and Chinese friends, and I needed that time. I had my own place in New York, and it was the best four months cos I got to hang out and go, ‘That girl’s ’fro is bigger than mine.’ But then I was like, ‘You know what? Why do I feel like I’m beating down the other side of me?’ And then I stopped searching. Cos my black, blackest friends, their best friends are white nerdy guys, and it suddenly made sense to me. It’s just about people, it’s not about colour. I was searching because I’d none of it growing up. Then I got it, and suddenly coming home I felt more at ease.”
‘The Worst Is Over’, as the tune goes. I heard that song (which, apart from ‘Mmm’, is the album’s most explicitly gospel-influenced moment), as a kid singing to her mother.
“It wasn’t actually my mother, but it was somebody very, very close that I’d seen over the years. I just couldn’t understand how you could stick around with somebody that treated you so badly. But as mature as that song sounds, I’ve matured since, and I understand that situation more now. I wrote that when I was about 16, and I had this big fairy tale of what love was, and when I saw this person in tears, I was like, ‘Why are you sticking at this?’ And now in fact they’ve kids and they are really happy and that was just a rough patch. If you love somebody you love somebody and you stick at it, but I didn’t understand that at the time, I just thought, ‘You’re upset and you seem to be sad more than you’re happy – why are you sticking around?’
“I watched this site called ted.com,” she continues, “college lecturers, and this one woman studied the brain when in love, and then when you’ve been dumped, and her diagnosis is that love is a drug. It’s the exact same withdrawal symptoms, and it’s no coincidence that when somebody takes the love away or ignores you, you want them so much more, and it’s the same chemical area, the same want, the same need for fulfillment that you get apparently when you take cocaine. We’re not crazy, it is actually a chemical thing that happens to us. So all that texting and playing games, when someone says, ‘Don’t text him; you’ll kill it,’ it really does work.”
That stuff drives me nuts.
“It does though! You can’t help it, even though you’re like, ‘Why am I doing this? I’m just gonna freak them out.’ But you can’t physically stop it. I hate to say it, because I don’t like to think of love that way, but when I saw that programme I realised there’s actually some scientific explanation for why we all feel that at one point. And what she was hinting at is that love is when you meet someone on that exact same chemical wave, so that you move together at the same time.”
The flipside of that is a break-up song like ‘Don’t Stay’, which, in its generosity and maturity, makes saying goodbye feel good.
“Well, when you get out of that (bad situation) and you’re with someone that absolutely adores you, you’re like, ‘How did I stay in that for so long?’ I find that sometimes with friendships. I had long-term friends I thought were my best buddies and then you take that bit of distance and you’re like, ‘You’re actually negative, you put me down a lot and I didn’t even notice it.’ And you suddenly realise, ‘Hang on, I don’t have to be friends with this person, or I don’t have to be in a relationship, because you actually make me feel not good right now.’
“It’s just following your gut. Your body will scream out to you. If you’re angry, next time you’re even anxious, you stop, and it’ll go somewhere in your body, physically, you’ll feel it in your hands or in your toes, even your ears. It’s crazy. Sometimes I get it in my hands, maybe it’s cos I play the keys as well, and I have to shake it out. And then I can relax cos I’ve pinpointed where it is. It’s a release of stress.”