Strawberry Blood

If you can dream it, then you can achieve it/And if you believe it, then you will receive it.” So sings Edmund ‘Mundy’ Enright on ‘It’s All Yours’, the upbeat third track on his long-awaited fourth studio outing. Having had something of a rollercoaster career to date, the boy from Birr sure knows what he’s singing about when it comes to holding onto your dreams.
Then again, now aged 33, Mundy is no longer a boy (wonder). Rather he’s a somewhat battle-scarred music industry veteran. It’s hard to believe that it’s been almost 13 years since the then fresh-faced Offaly native released his wobbly debut Jelly Legs. Although the excellent ‘To You I Bestow’ featured on the soundtrack to Bazz Luhrmann’s Romeo & Juliet movie, sales were relatively disappointing. Britpop was in ascendancy by the time his follow-up, The Moon Is A Bullethole, was ready to be released, leaving Mundy fairly high and dry, an unfashionably odd fish out of the zeitgeist waters. It must have come as a humiliation when he was unceremoniously dropped by Epic. Having been signed in a heartbeat at just 19 summers, and had a successful career more or less handed to him on a silver platter (he was supporting an Alanis Morrisette tour after playing less than ten gigs with his band), it took a while to recover from this rejection.
After a necessary period of wound-licking retreat, he rebounded with a moderately successful reworked version (24 Star Hotel) under his own steam in 2002. Of course, he’s done pretty well for himself since – third album Raining Down Arrows rained straight down at No.1 in 2004, stopgap live album Live & Confusion notched up double platinum sales in 2005, and his cover, with Sharon Shannon, of Steve Earle’s ‘Galway Girl’ became the most overplayed song in the history of Irish radio (or maybe it just felt that way).
For all the local success, though, you get the feeling that Mundy still feels that he’s got something to prove – even if only to himself. The fact that he’s wearing a costume and make-up on the cover of Strawberry Blood says a lot about how seriously he’s taking this record. Fearful of a slagging from local muso also-rans, the Mundy of old would never have attempted such a theatrical conceit. Nowadays, though, with so much to play for, he’s obviously decided to go hell for top hat and give it his all.
No bad thing. Recorded in Grouse Lodge and The Cauldron, and produced by Joe Chester, this album is easily the best thing he’s ever done. With 14 tracks featured, it’s also possibly the best thing he’s overdone, but with a recession in full swing let’s not castigate him for offering more bang for your buck.
There’s no radical musical departure – it’s basically a rock album with a rolling style – but he’s honed his craft to such a polished degree that it’s basically dud-free (though a track or two are dangerously MOR). American influences are writ large – notably the likes of Springsteen, Shaky, Dylan, Waits, Oldham, etc. Listen closely enough and you’ll even pick up radio-friendly shades of Foreigner.
Surprisingly, Sharon Shannon doesn’t show up (perhaps he couldn’t squeezebox her in?), but he’s got a little help from some other musical friends. A raspy Shane MacGowan contributes suitably sandpaper-ish vocals to the excellent ‘Love Is A Casino’, Interference’s Fergus O’Farrell sings on ‘Pepper In My Dreams’, and Gemma Hayes harmonises nicely on ‘Fever’.
Such is Mundy’s popularity with his extensive local fanbase, it’s pretty much a given that Strawberry Blood will sell bucketloads in Ireland. However, a couple of tracks here sound almost custom made for US daytime radio (‘Cruisin’ Paradise’ and ‘The Corn & The Orange Sun’). They won’t go down well with the musical cognoscenti, but Mundy never much cared for them anyway. With a lot of luck and thousands of miles of road and superhighway, this album could well be the remaking of him as a serious star. If he believes it, then he will receive it...
Key Track: 'Tenerife (Cruisin' Paradise)'