Tarka and Friends: Life

A society swish and beautiful boy – squeezes included Kate Moss and Liv Tyler – Tarka Cordell was the life and maybe even the soul of the party until the morning he hung himself in 2008. The sometime musician left behind a catalogue of songs which friends and supporters have now come together to record.

Among his prominent acquaintances was Lily Allen (married to his half-brother Sam Cooper), who dials the mockney-isms down on her emotive tilt at ‘Shelter You’. The son of famous producer Denny Cordell (who discovered The Cranberries and, towards the end of his career, summered in a sprawling Anglo-Irish pile in Carlow), Cordell grew up among musicians – Keith Richards gave him his first guitar lesson and he chummed around with Evan Dando through the ‘90s. Behind the playboy lifestyle he was evidently a sensitive writer, his rakish reputation obscuring a deep soulfulness. Such qualities glimmer brightly here, such as on Dando’s performance of ‘Lovely New York’.

Elsewhere Scoundrels and Dirty Gentlemen pitch in with ‘Girls Keith’ (apparently inspired by Richards’ upset at what he perceived to be Cordell’s lack of work ethic) and Alice Temple (of producer Eg White’s Alice and Eg project) contributes the creeping and lovely ‘Lullaby’.