Alison O’Donnell
Hark The Voice That Sings For All
Talking Elephant
2022
Dublin-born singer Alison O’Donnell has been variously tagged as a songstress and a chanteuse. Still, whatever semantic distinctions one may propose or draw, there can be no argument that she possesses one of the truly unique voices on the contemporary Irish music scene: an awesome vocal presence and an exceptional, unusual and highly distinctive singer by any standards. But Alison’s so much more than a singer. A musician in the broadest sense, a musical innovator who possesses both a deep appreciation of and respect for tradition and eager responsiveness to experimentation and new ideas and methods. And a masterful, literate songwriter with an acute awareness of, and sensitivity to, folklore and cultural history, its branches and nuances and implications, and to the human condition. Hence the subtitle of her latest collection: “new songs in an ancient tradition”.
Alison has thus far enjoyed a spectacularly varied and furiously eclectic 50-year musical career that began in wild-eyed teenage-ingénue fashion in the vocal front-line of the 60s-70s-straddling cult folk-rock band Mellow Candle (missing out on commercial success at the time, but latterly reappraised and justly celebrated for their unique brand of zeitgeist). Alison’s subsequent musical adventures over the next couple of decades took her from the formation of the traditional group Flibbertigibbet (with ex-Mellow Candle guitarist David Williams) to musical theatre and spells with sundry jazz and rock outfits, subsequently recording a further traditionally-oriented album with Flemish guitarist Philip Masure and other musicians, under the band name of “éishtlinn”. Since returning to Ireland in 2001, Alison has become involved in a bewildering panoply of projects and collaborative ventures across folk and other genres, from working with Steven Collins of The Owl Service to long-term membership of acclaimed psych-folk collective United Bible Studies. In tandem with all this activity, Alison has released a small handful of solo albums – of which Hark The Voice That Sings For All is the fourth.
Hark indeed, for the album could not be more aptly titled. As a commanding clarion call, it brilliantly epitomises the all-embracing nature of Alison’s music – since hers is a universal voice that represents all of life, its characters and situations, and is in tune with the concerns and attitudes of the world’s inhabitants. Her personal vision is both holistic and inclusive, and this is also reflected in the ever-thoughtful, imaginative and all-encompassing musical settings with which she invests her songs (a healthy measure of credit for which must also go to Alison’s producer/arranger/engineer/simpatico multi-instrumentalist Anthony “Booster” Bools, not to mention a hand-picked crew of additional musicians). With each song, the consciously arranged tapestry is thoughtfully engineered, every strand of the often complex texture clearly delineated and satisfyingly present. (And I also loved the complementary, quietly epic, art-cinematic quality of the subtle grey-toned artwork.
Having said all of that, it’s Alison’s album, and it’s her tremendous, commanding singing voice that’s both at the forefront and the beating heart of the soundscape and texture. This duality is reflected almost incidentally in the fact that her songs can also stand proudly alone, shorn of, and transcending, their instrumental scoring – and I can sure testify to that, having been privileged to experience Alison’s mighty unadorned a cappella singing in the (perhaps illogically intimate) environment of online singing sessions (including previews of a number of the album’s songs). This revelation surely represents further endorsement of the enduring quality of Alison’s songwriting, songs built to last through and into tradition (and in different settings).
Alison’s use of language is creative, and her rhyme schemes and structures are artfully conceived. Having said that, the scansion can sometimes present a challenge to the listener in instances where not every syllable (or word or phrase) gets to make its mark in quite the way one might expect from a parallel reading of the text, but this is all part of the imaginative theatricality of Alison’s storytelling. Ditto the strongly personal way Alison treats her melodies, almost casually (but entirely knowingly) taking them for a trip away from the tramlines, with the air of totally confident (and natural) improv that’s so integral a part of her musical psyche, often taking a seemingly random, wilful departure from where one expects the melody to go. This can be both spine-tingling and exhilarating for the listener.
The well-balanced sequence of story-songs and portraits-in-song on this album demonstrate the breadth of Alison’s vision, the versatility of her stylistic invention and her generous (though not uncritical) appraisal of attitudes and moral conundrums facing humankind from those times of ancient tradition and chronicled in song. Alison is so very adept at using traditional song forms and modes as vehicles in the time-honoured way of the ancient tradition’s songmakers and storytellers. The tale of The Lass From The Distant Shore opens proceedings with a syncopated, slightly funky bodhrán beat, with added chorus vocals and spare melodica riffs. There’s a carefree, if slippery and prickly vibe to the song, signalling the lass’s dishonourable intentions towards the naive lad she marries. The haunting Farewell To The Strawberry Tree, which follows, brings a powerful twist to the traditional trope of the broken token ballad; in this instance, the abandoned girl’s realisation of her love’s betrayal in a foreign land is portrayed in aching, yearning music that turns quickly and intensely to anger and sorrow, with eerie, heartrendingly dramatic gestures. Here, the shifting timbres of the atmosphere-drenched musical backdrop provide exactly the sense of other-worldly almost-disbelief felt by the girl at the shock, leading to her violent destruction of the gifted token.
Next, in complete contrast, comes I Wish We’d Sailed On The Jeanie Johnston. An ostensibly doom-laden saga ingeniously set to a rock-‘n’-rollicking Bo Diddley shuffle-beat, it’s a tale of hardship on one of the coffin ships sailing to America during the time of The Great Hunger in Ireland (the Jeanie Johnston was the only ship that managed to escape incurring a death toll, hence the unabashed irony of the song’s title). The song was inspired by Alison’s reading of Robert Whyte’s 1847 Famine Ship Diary: The Journey Of An Irish Coffin Ship; she brings the voyage alive in gleefully wordy, if often grisly detail through a series of wonderfully picaresque near-cameos, also indulging in some delirious lilting invoking the voices of the beleaguered “bony emigrants and crew” who perished.
The tidal ebb and flow lead into the gorgeous triple-time lament The Unwelcome Tide Of Tomorrow, where we can marvel anew at the combination of reserved power and delicate lyricism in Alison’s voice, taking on the mantle of the grieving lady and making the drama of her predicament her very own. The follow-on track, Splendid Ring, is a slighter take on the familiar traditional scenario of the girl on the shore abandoned by her seafaring lover, this time clothed in a lazy country-styled folk-rock idiom.
Brothers Grey, another standout composition, delivers a heartfelt commentary on animal cruelty and persecution, told through the story of two sibling greyhounds and their fate. The lyrics are set to a slow tally-ho lope and a long-breathed melody of serious beauty and wide compass that stretches right across Alison’s stunning vocal range. Alison’s observation of behaviour in the natural world continues through Shout Our Redemption To The Silvery Pines is a stately hymn to nature that builds inexorably from a cyclic mandolin figure to a full-throated choral mantra, with a central thesis that there can be redemption and forgiveness following posturing and confrontation and that hostility can be turned round to a more peaceful stance.
The Man Who Taught The Nation (previewed last month on Folk Radio’s ‘Folk Show Episode 122‘), by a small margin the album’s longest track, is a passionate biography-in-song of Padraig Pearse, revolutionary hero and a key figure in the Easter Rising (and author of the 1912 Irish nationalist poem Mise Éire) who was executed for his leadership. The stark instrumental palette, stirring declamatory vocal style and flat-contoured melodic line Alison adopts here is entirely appropriate for the subject’s steadfast inspiration and indomitable spirit.
Four Fine Females is a portmanteau tribute to four brave women who made their mark in Ireland: Rosie Hackett (trade unionist and activist); Peg Plunkett (a feisty 18th-century brothel madam); Countess Markievicz (a politician, revolutionary, nationalist, suffragist and socialist who came to prominence during 1916); and Veronica Guerin (a late-20* century journalist who doggedly reported on the actions of drug criminals in Dublin). The females proudly strut their stuff to an animated tango-style beat, and the track signs off with a cautiously triumphant fiddle reel.
The album is rounded off with a pair of contrasting songs that centre on birds – another ancient and fascinating aspect of creation that greatly interests Alison. First comes the bare sean-nós-styled Scarlet Berries For The Mistle Thrush, a most poignant song of love and loss diving off the springboard of “As I walked out” but soon bringing in a chilling sense of place with the memory of where her love plunged down. It features startling imagery and no accompaniment save some ambient field and bird sounds. The singer is racked with sorrow but is hardly consoled, even by nature, and Alison’s closeup and intimate expression of the singer’s emotional state is a pin-drop moment. Finally comes the album’s closing track, a rousing, upbeat celebration of The Birds Of Belfast Lough, the many bird species that visit the Belfast Lough nature reserve in the Belfast Harbour Estate. Not only does Alison prove her ornithological cred in her observation of the species’ behaviour and special jizz, but she also works in references to the local area’s heritage and history in appreciation of the interaction of man and nature over the ages. The song’s catchy, if breathless chorus sports a litany of bird names, and there’s also a fleet-footed instrumental break, a veritable “reel in the flickering light” to set the feet tapping before rest is called with the thump of the bodhrán.
Hark The Voice That Sings For All is a terrific album. It’s Alison’s exhortation to listen. Listen to her stories, listen to her voice. Alison’s music is alive with the power and vibrant energy of living storytelling. She possesses a unique sense of expressive drama, investing each lyric with her own personality and a commitment to personal ownership that’s presented in a way that fully involves the listener. In my book, Alison is the archetypal dramatic storyteller in song who can lay claim to being truly the voice that sings for all.
http://www.alisonodonnell.com/