Mundy - Mundy

Over the last two decades, Mundy’s career has had as many ups and downs as a quality control operative for bungee cord. Back in the mid ’90s, he was the great hope of Irish rock, ready to shoot for the stratosphere of international fame and fortune with a belter of a song, ‘To You I Bestow’, on the coolest soundtrack of the year, Baz Luhrmann’s Romeo & Juliet, and a debut album, Jellylegs, produced by Killing Joke bassist Martin Glover, better known as Youth (The Verve, Pink Floyd). The intervening years have seen massive hits (‘July’, ‘Galway Girl’), multi-platinum albums (24 Star Hotel) and the singer become one of the most beloved live acts in the country. However, he’s been operating below the radar since 2011’s covers collection, Shuffle.
With Mundy, there’s a sense that things have come full circle. He’s back working with Youth for one thing – the album was recorded at the latter’s Spanish studio with Youth on bass, engineer Michael Rendal on keyboards and assistant engineer Eddie Banda on drums, along with some extra guitar from Simon Tong (The Verve, Damon Albarn) and sitar from Michael Wadada (Suns of Arqa). More important than the producer or the band, however, is the fact that Mundy is back doing what he does best: writing ridiculously infectious pop-rock songs that lodge in your cranium like squatters in a vacant house.
TOn an album that was smartly funded through a PledgeMusic campaign, the singer sounds both re-energised and relaxed on tracks like punchy lead single, ‘Shot In The Dark’, the summery shimmer of ‘Midnight Sun’ and the country rock of the unfortunately titled ‘Glory Hole’, about working in the mines of Australia. Another immigrant song, ‘UAE’ sees the singer imagining the loneliness of life as an ex-pat in the Middle East. ‘Doghouse’ is a pounding rocker about being in the bad books, complete with whoops and hollers aplenty, and a guitar hook not unlike U2’s classic ‘I Will Follow’.
The lovely ‘Sarah Of The Slopes’ starts off like a tender piano ballad, falsetto vocal and all, before morphing into a widescreen affair, all dramatic swathes of strings, cascading guitars and a melody that resonates long after the last note has faded. Another highlight is ‘Window Shopping For Faith’, about the search for spirituality in the connected age.
Pick of the bunch, though is ‘Six Lonely Spinsters’, a charming and disarming tale of trying to find love in small town Ireland – think Brinsley MacNamara’s fabled “valley of the squinting windows/ Where women itch and curtains twitch” – that sees him perfectly capture the feeling of being trapped amid “cans of Pledge and the pillowcase duster and the cobwebs of my mind.”
Mundy has enjoyed remarkable moments throughout every phase of his two decade career so far, but this sixth album sounds like a high-point, and his strongest suit of songs in over a decade.

Key Track - 'Six Lonely Spinsters'