Sonny: He Hasn't Gone Away You Know

Some SONGS holler their allegiances from the rooftops. Others simply insinuate themselves into the subconscious with the dexterity of a tapestry weaver. Sonny Condell s been in the business of weaving stories and songs for quite a while now, and with the release of his 11th album, French Windows, he s created a particularly fine tapestry that subtly lures the listener into its curious labyrinth.
He s been silent for almost four years now, since the 1994 release of the sublime Someone To Dance With. But beneath the vagaries of the recording industry lies a faith which has seen Condell constantly writing new material during that recording hiatus. Which meant that when it finally came time to go back into the recording studio, he had oceans of new songs to draw from.
Sonny hadn t limited himself during that time simply to songwriting, and his recent acquaintances have offered a stunning alternative take on his music. He unexpectedly found much common ground with Graham Henderson and Roy Dodds, both formerly of Fairground Attraction, and with a thriving musical partnership forged with Neil McColl (son of Ewan, brother of Kirsty), he was hardly short of a few shoulders when it came time to put them to the wheel.
Graham (Henderson) was the keyboard player with Donal Lunny s band, Condell elaborates, and we hit it off as soon as we met. Then we went to London to start the recording in a lovely intimate studio, and there I met Simon (Edwards), the bass player and Neil McColl, who s just stunning. There s something quite extraordinary about Neil s playing, and about the way he approached the songs.
Undoubtedly French Windows has a harder, and (at least to these ears) more commercial edge to it than his last outing, Someone To Dance With. Was this a conscious decision, or did the musicians Condell was working with simply brew up the storm in the studio?
It was a totally different experience, yes, Sonny nods. I really enjoyed working with Maire Breathnach on the last album, but this was simply a different experience. Graham was gently arranging things, and although this might sound like just a technical difference, this time round I sang as I played. Before, I d always divorced the singing from the playing for production purposes, but Graham saw no particular necessity for this. And I think it made for a much more organic process in the end. I felt like the whole recording process just put clothes on the songs really nicely.
The question of commercial success, and the even thornier one of whether to cut the songwriting cloth to measure these commercial constraints is one that Condell acknowledges, but with which he is not overly preoccupied.
I just wrote the songs as I normally write, whatever I m lucky enough to come up with, he explains. I wasn t trying to be particularly commercial, but I suppose in some part of my brain I was thinking that the last album got very little airplay, apart from Mike Moloney and John Creedon. It s just the way daytime radio is, so I suppose I was aware that it would be very nice if things did manage to fit into a radio-friendly situation. Because there s no point in doing albums for yourself. You ve got to get the music out there, for people to hear.
Sonny Condell s always followed a particularly idiosyncratic path, lyrically. Many of his songs use a pastoral palette that s all too rare in the world of three minute pop sensations. Stories of barns blazing, of milk churns and of haystacks mingle seamlessly with the more familiar songwriting preoccupations of love and urban life.
I have such vivid memories of growing up, and sometimes they appear out of the blue, he says. I can remember the atmosphere of the farm, walking across a field, and imagining it as the sea, and I was a captain of a ship and I was navigating a course to the harbour which would have been the gate. And I remember looking up at the sky which was a kind of vibrating blue, and there were larks, which we couldn t even see, they were so high in the sky, but you could hear them twittering away. It was just throbbing with atmosphere and it never left my brain. So I just had to encapsulate it in a song.
Ultimately though, Condell refuses to get hung up about what people will or won t get from his lyrics.
I always equate listening to an album to looking at an abstract painting, he avers, and that is how I would like it to be. It s a collection of feelings really. How they strike you with the chord or melody underneath, and how that affects you is what I m interested in. That doesn t always add up to a linear, cause and effect storyline, although some of the songs are very straightforward lyrically. I like songs that don t necessarily make sense because I think they leave more room for the imagination. They leave windows for you to go through to explore your own feelings.
Such considerations of the imagination are few and far between in the music business, Condell believes.
I find a lot of stuff now has such a basic lyric that there s no further room for dwelling on it at all. It still can be brilliant. I m certainly not saying that all pop music is rubbish, but it sometimes leaves so little to the imagination.
Despite his multifarious musical incarnations in the past (solo performer, partnered of Leo O Kelly in the now infamous Tmr Na Nsg, and his spectacular creative success with the much loved Scullion), Condell is probably most at home these days when he s writing for himself. Listening to Jericho for example, you can almost slip your fingers through the song, with its loosely woven fabric of images.
Condell helpfully explains its origin: It s a song about my age, and the biblical story of the children of Israel going round the walls of Jericho and blowing their trumpets. It s also about someone who s drinking a lot, going from bar to bar, and finding nothing but coldness. It s a comment on the strange culture we have now where there s nothing but sport, being fed stuff on TV and radio. I think it s a wish to be elsewhere, like when you re on Dun Laoghaire harbour and the sense of peace that the sea brings. I suppose it s a feeling of wanting to knock our culture down and for things to be different. It s like getting airplay: you have to sound like this or that to get your record played.
That said, Sonny Condell is under no illusions that talent equals success. A lot of the time serendipity plays a far greater role. And serendipity has certainly smiled down on him lately, with one of his best known songs, Eyelids Into Snow finding its way onto the latest Nissan string of commercials. A most unlikely but exceedingly likeable partnership.
That s been a nice break, Condell smiles, getting the Nissan ad, because it s helped to make me feel good about my music again. It s almost like the moon has gone through a certain cycle and come round again, and it s saying: Right Sonny, things are going to line up quite nicely for you now . I get that feeling and it s really exciting, because it s coming from so many different quarters, from the album, the Nissan people being interested in my song, and it makes everything much more agreeable and positive. n
Keep an eye on the listings for Sonny Condell s live tour in late January/early February 99. French Windows is available on Hummingbird. n