Lancelot

SJ is a shameless name-dropper. All sorts of folks get name-checked here, including Agamemnon, Clytaemnestra, Gene Clark, Baudelaire, Hendrix, Joan of Arc and Lancelot – and that’s just in the two openers, the smooth uptempo ‘Agamemnon’s Bath’ and the more reflective ‘The Raging Of The Sea’.

So SJ reads a lot, and it shows throughout his highly intelligent and literate, yet admirably accessible, electric-folk offerings. His voice owes a little to the firm of Cave and Cash, and Derek Turner’s astute production allows it to sit neatly atop the generally sterling band playing.

The solid ‘Whatever Happened To June?’ rocks, but ‘Up Grove Hill’ at times sounds like it’s about to transform into Johnny Cash doing ‘Don’t Think Twice It’s All Right’. The JC influence re-emerges to better effect in the excellent ‘Time And Again’ which also evokes the velvet tones of Chris Isaac.

The Pogues-lite, waltz-time ‘Juniper Tree’ is seductively catchy and ‘Heaven In Here’ shows McArdle’s full-bodied voice to perfection. ‘Little Bird’ works as grade A, finger-clickin’ rockabilly spiced up by McArdle’s electric guitar, and the Paul Simon-ish ‘Morning Creeping In’ is a sublime slice of nutritious folk-rock. In ‘Rosemary Has A Problem’ his voice takes a brief walk on the northside a la Damien Dempsey.

Apparently I once described SJ as “brilliant!”. I’m not sure if I’d go quite so far with this work as a whole, but how about “damn good?”