Julie Feeney - Clocks

 Julie Feeney is a talented award-winning Irish artist. Composer, singer, song-writer, orchestrator, comedian, producer… She has a strong curriculum vitae offering a solid base for her third album Clocks, mixed by David Reitzas (who has produced Madonna, Guns N’ Roses and Prince).

It also became No. 1 in the Independent Irish Album Charts, No. 7 in the main Irish charts on its Irish release in late 2012, and Julie has won the praises of chief pop music critic Jon Pareles in The New York Times.

Digitally recorded at Kylemore Abbey Gothic Church, county Galway, the album is airy and fairy, but also somehow tonic and very personal. The singer’s nice mezzo voice, if not loud and exuberant, is nevertheless always perfectly right and neat.

From the first notes of her first song, ‘Dear John’, you are taken away to a dreamy Irish landscape by the river under a full moon. It is indeed a merry and romantic song, both in lyrics and orchestration – with a harpsichord and violins in the background.

It continues on a calm second track, ‘Cold Water’, opening on a binary rhythm which alternates at the chorus with a ternary one, giving a nice movement to the piece. The harp in the background, giving a romantic touch again, is rightly balanced with the presence of a bass guitar. On this one, the Galway-born singer is charmingly pronouncing “pull you through” with a “t” instead of the “th” sound, as any self-respecting western Irish does.

‘If I Lose You Tonight’, number six, will be the album’s favourite song for those Irish music lovers out there. It is a love song strongly traditionally-influenced, on a background of calm fiddle and banjo, and a spectrum of notes echoing all traditional Irish songs. On this one, you can easily picture the pretty windswept green fields of the emerald island.

The seventh track, ‘Moment Out Of The Blue ‘, is a calm anti-war song. On this one Julie uses more her speaking voice, quite emotionally loaded. It can remind one of the way of singing – and even of the voice tone – of Irish singer Sinéad O’Connor.

Like the previous one, the eighth song ‘Happy Ever After’ is more contemporary, with a clearer use of sound effects like artificial brass instruments and organ, and whistling. It is telling the tale of a girl who has got proposed by the king, but who prefers to stay alone in her own wonderland: within her only is her happiness.

Julie Feeney’s Clocks album is an overall very peaceful, subtle pop work presenting a series of elaborate melodies. It is both unpretentious and imaginative, and that’s what makes its originality, charm and quality.

This article appeared on AAAmusic.co.uk.

Conference "Regard sur l'Irlande" : Marie-Louise O'Connell

Marie-Louise O'Donnell

On Friday night a conference about Ireland took place at the Centre Culturel Irlandais in Paris, by Irish reporter and senator Marie-Louise O'Donnell. I was expecting something rather standardized about Ireland's contemporary
situation – its economy and political current issues for instance: nothing new under the sun. But I have been given something else entirely.

Instead of listening to a dull explanation of facts and events, Marie-Louise spoke from her heart, from her guts even, about this country that she loves so much and could never be far away from for long. She talked fondly about the proud Irish people, their fundamental artistic character which they have somehow lost and must regain; in brief, she spoke about Irish identity as she saw it, from a cultural, human, sentimental point of view.

Beginning her speech by praising Paris's riches and beauty, she kept the public entertained with humorous notes here and there – mainly jokes about Ireland, and putting in comparison the two together. But those were not malevolent jokes, rather they were gentle pokes as one would do with a longtime, dear friend.

O'Donnell talked with sparkling eyes of her childhood in County Mayo, and when she went to visit her grandmother in a countryside village. It was there, when she was still little, that she became aware of the power of language, of words, of voices. No wonder then that she became an actor and theatre administrator, before becoming a reporter, broadcaster and politician – each of these jobs being closely related to orality.

After the first humorous and nostalgic half of her speech, she went on on a more sensitive subject for Irish people, and a more important issue: the turning point which represented the recent death (30 August of this year) of the Irish poet, senator, lecturer and playwriter Seamus Justin Heaney, who had won a Nobel Prize in Literature in 1995. He was a proud Irish figure, fond of his country – he always emphasized that he was Irish, and not British – and knew that Ireland needed to take back her essence, take back her talent to produce, and stop copying: “The trappings of moderrnity have nothing to do with us.”

Indeed the modern bankers and the like have made the emerauld island drift away from its artistic path. Ireland was – but still is, and has to persist in this way – a country of arts, and of sound, and of writing. When Heaney died, there was a great outpour of grief in Ireland, said O'Donnell, herself repressing some tears. But not one that could be seen for a celebrity; it was the grief felt about a void inside every Irish people, that could not be fulfilled after Heaney's death. And in order “to do him justice”, and do justice to Ireland, the people must take back their country and believe in their talent again, before it is too late.

An unexpected music treat in a pub in
Miltown Malbay (Willie Clancy Festival 2012)

She also talked about how the Irish were brute and to-the-point when they spoke, but always in an honest and relevant way; how it was easy to encounter Irish writers in the street and have a chat over a pint with them if you wanted to.

When she told all her anecdotes, this made me feel like I was back there again. The Irish do have a joy of living, and an openness that you would not find in Great-Britain or in France – without either being crude or too extraverted as in the United-States or in Mediterrean countries. And the arts do take an important part of their everyday-life: it is still easy to find pubs in which small bands – traditional or not – are playing for a few hours in exchange of some pints, to the delight of all.

O'Donnell ended her speech on a poetic touch with one of Heaney's poems, "Land", before taking questions from the public.
In the end, instead of heading home with a notebook full of data, I came back with a head full of memories.

This article was written for this blog only.