Mick Flannery, Junior Brother & Wyvern Lingo On Van Morrison

Mick Flannery

Across six acclaimed albums, double-platinum-selling singer-songwriter Mick Flannery has established himself as one of the country’s most compelling talents. Following the release of his Choice Music Prize-nominated self-titled album last year, his latest project, Alive: Cork Opera House 2019, was released in July – with all proceeds going to his band and crew, who have lost work due to the Covid-19 crisis.

The first time I really remember connecting with Van Morrison’s music was watching The Last Waltz. His performance of ‘Caravan’ just stole the show.

Since then, I’ve always liked his singing, and the natural sound of his albums. His vocal ability, his songwriting and his sense for melody are what make him so special.

Junior Brother

An idiosyncratic and richly lyrical singer-songwriter, Junior Brother has enjoyed a landmark few years. Since being chosen as one of RTÉ's Rising Irish Stars of 2018, the Kerry native has toured with The Proclaimers, Lankum, Glen Hansard and The Murder Capital. His debut album, Pull The Right Rope, was released back in 2019 to critical acclaim – earning a Choice Music Prize nomination for Album of the Year, as well as two nominations for the RTÉ Radio 1 Folk Awards, for Best Folk Album and Best Emerging Folk Act.

As a venerated staple of modern Irish pop music, Van Morrison's music wafted in and out of my childhood – on the car radio, out of shop windows, on television programmes and ads for past concerts. His was such a musical presence that much of the imagery and mood of his most atmospheric pieces remains tied to profound imagery of local landscapes from home.

A personal depth of connection with the music was first forged upon discovering the seminal 1968 record Astral Weeks. Having read enough old, white, musical gatekeeper men expounding the song cycle's merits, I finally bought the CD as a young teenager on a trip with my father to Limerick city.

Listening to Astral Weeks in the car home to Kilcummin that day was my first encounter with a sort of uncompromising commitment to natural atmosphere and free song structure – two aspects of musical character I remain in wondrous pursuit of. The artwork had as much of an impact. I had never seen an album artwork convey the mind-altering nature of the Irish landscape so simply and so profoundly before. So began my own continuing chase of these very elements in my own music and visuals.

As a human, I'm sure Van Morrison is no more special than you or me. The music of Van Morrison however is the very definition of transcendental, but not in a naff, New Age way – rather, in a totally grounded, earthy and endlessly curious type of way. His is a music of the sublime, with one figure cast to the front, tasked to convey awe and insignificance next to nature.

Morrison is a prime example of the artist pushing limits of mood, length, patience and profound inner-questioning. Across the lengthy, decades-spanning career Van the Man has travelled through, his capacity for stretching these limits has been varied. However, the many musical, spiritual and atmospheric Everests scaled and surpassed by Morrisson are numbered so plentifully, the searching young Irish artist can see the clearing and cut their own way to their own potential peaks, Morrison's fire strong in their gut.

I heard ‘Dweller on the Threshold’ many years ago when I found a scratched CD of The Best of Van Morrison in my father's car as a young teen. This was before I got properly into him, and among the more familiar and less interesting tracks on the collection, this one stood out. The glossy production deterred me at first, but very soon after I was swept into the song's propulsive rhythm and intrigued by Van's searching poetry. The dweller on the threshold is a figure standing between artifice and truth, who assures us he will leave behind the former but never fully enters into the latter. For my cover, I changed the time signature to more suit my stranger sensibilities, but I have hopefully kept the yearning spirit of the original alive within my version.

Wyvern Lingo's Caoimhe Barry

Bray trio Wyvern Lingo have established themselves as one of the country's most captivating, genre-blending acts. Earlier this year, they returned with 'Don't Say It' – their first new music since the release of their Choice Music Prize-nominated, self-titled debut album in 2018. The followed the success of their new track with charity single 'Brutal Lottery' – with all proceeds going to Missing Children Europe.

Van Morrison was always part of the extensive CD collection in my house growing up –but the first time I really connected with his music was when a friend put 'Sweet Thing' on a compilation CD for me when I was in college. That was when I properly started to pay attention and listened more intently to Astral Weeks and Moondance.

His music is deeply nostalgic – like long car journeys, or a breakfast fry on a Saturday morning. I completely associate warm nights in summer with hearing the opening lyrics of 'And It Stoned Me': "Half a mile from the county fair...".

His musicality just seems to flow out of him, his song deliveries are effortless and full of soul. His ability to capture the atmosphere of live performance in his albums is unrivaled. To say I feel connected to his legacy would feel egotistical, but it's a very solid goal to aim for.

'Domino' wasn't the obvious choice for us to cover, but we decided to try to make it our own – swapping out the big brass band sound for one more understated, and vocally led.

See the full line-up for this week's 'Rave On, Van Morrison' performances here.

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You can find all the 'Rave On, Van Morrison' performances on the Hot Press YouTube channel.