Lord Of Your Eyes

CHRISTIE HENNESSY: “Lord Of Your Eyes” (Warner)

Sometimes in this job, you make, by design or accident, the oddest connections between people. Quite how Christy Hennessy and Paul Durcan, whose A Snail In My Prime is sitting by my left hand are joined, I don’t pretend to understand, but it seems to me that they somewhere have developed common cause.

Perhaps the link is in the invitational tone in their material’ one is seduced from without, enveloped in a world peopled by ordinary mortals with sometimes extraordinary things to say.

As with his previous albums, The Rehearsal and A Year In The Life, Hennessey’s subject matter m mainly concerns love – gained, blighted and even the ordinary kind. ‘Love’s Great Pretender’ is a classic Brief Encounter story, full of hook lines and hummable bits, one for the top of the 19 bus and the drive to Cork in a rented car.

Much of the rest of the album occupies the same territory. But what gives Hennessy the edge over many who write in a similar genre is the sense that in his world, the magical can be made out of the mundane. This alchemy he often works, with extraordinary effect.

There are of course, other forces at work here also. Producer (and former Yardbird) Paul Samwell-Smith has contributed in no small way to the success of this project – his touch is equally sure on gentle acoustic meanderings and more substantive and sculpted soundscapes alike.

Lord Of Your Eyes is a most accomplished album. If you have ears to hear . . .

• Oliver P. Sweeney