Mick Flannery is the first international signing to Oh Boy Records, the label the late John Prine set up. On Goodtime Charlie, the gravelly-voiced Co. Cork-born singer-songwriter is again joined by long-time backing band Alan Comerford on guitar, Mikey O’Connell on bass and producer Christian Best behind the drums. He also expands his list of collaborators for his ninth studio album, including three co-writes with Ana Egge. It’s one such that opens proceedings, the gospel-infused, gradually swelling Neon Tonight with its Hammond and brass, a number about a band nervously getting ready to take to the stage, something described as “like trying to build a home/That lets it feel the rain”.
The loosely lurching swampy title track with its ‘woohoo’ hook follows, “about a gambler who is liable to do anything at any time, as long as it’s a goodtime”, though the line “Tryna help you grumpy motherfuckers let go” might somewhat limit its radio play.
The first of two geographically anchored numbers, co-written with Deer Tick producer Adam Landry, OK LA casts the City of Angels and its ability to both inspire and crush dreams as toxic bleached blonde with a happy pill and a mirror to the soul (“How dare you show me who I am”) that teases but never delivers (“Baby why you don’t, give me what I think I want?”). The other, again addressing a person’s relationship to the state in which they live, the piano ballad Minnesota is primarily sung by regular collaborator Anaïs Mitchell, with McNally harmonising, as the voice of a woman who has grown from seeing the state as a parent to seeing it as her difficult child who she must protect (“when I was your daughter/I looked up to you/I thought that you knew all there was to know… now that I’m your mother/I see you as you are/You’re not some shining star, not a destination/You’re a growing child, that I hope to raise right”), extending the idea to American itself as a trouble-child (“I hope you understand/That if you don’t move toward them/Dreams get broken”).
The second Egge co-write is Machine, carrying with it a sense of progress eroding the things we once treasured, here in his memory of working on cars with his father (“I always found you head inside an engine/With your rag pushed into your back pocket/Hand me ratchet pass me socket/I pretend to be taken by resistors and cables/Filters, carburetors, and fuel injection ratios”) set against the bitter realisation that “electric is the future coming/They’re going to outlaw VB engines”, and the loss of the simple pleasures of “Elbow on the panel/Smiling out the window/Listening to the gravel” as he asks “You’re listening but do you hear the machine?”
The third, following directly on and about how travelling in a car gives you time to ponder things, the plinking rhythmically pulsing Someone To Tell It To is a basic love song with a measured snakelike groove (“like it when we’re moving/Then I can be slow down/I can get to thinking, and I know you’ll be around/You’re there to watch me watching all the world go by/You’re there to hear the questions why, how, why?”) tinged with intimations of mortality (“I don’t like it when we get there, it reminds me there’s an end/ And I wanted to keep going, can we go again?/I had so much more to tell you, I had so much: more to ask/I guess I want you to be with me, when what’s coming, comes to pass”).
Written with Tony Buchen and Justin Stanley, the latter on drums and acoustic, Flannery adopts falsetto for the steady marching, piano-driven Give Me Up, a song about staying the course in a relationship, however challenging that becomes when they push you away (“Rap that window all you want/This will not be your home./You put those people in your head/Now you can’t be left alone/God bless your crooked little heart/God damn your yellow soul”) and of not letting your pride get in the way (“Lay your pride in the ground/I see you pout, I hear you doubt/Kick the life out of yourself/You don’t need no one’s help/1 see you reach, I see you bow/ Hear the yearning of your heart”).
Another collaboration, as both duet and co-write, is with Tianna Esperanza, granddaughter of Palmolive from The Slits, on the heady, sparse and atmospherically moody tribal lullaby pulse of Old Friend, one of the two particular highlights, and initially released as part of pandemic Folk Alliance International’s “Artists in (Their) Residence” series, opening with Flannery’s tremulous voice before Esperanza deep bluesy tones take over, as namechecking Civil Rights activists, she intones “Is it so hard to believe/ That you could ever love me?/I’m no Doctor/I’m no Dean/I’m no Martin/I’m a little more Baldwin baby…’ I’m no heartache/But there’s a little darkness underneath”, the song, which she says is about male violence, builds in ominous intensity before Flannery returns for the final verse of “A little boy went walkin’/ Out into the world/You’d hardly think to mark him/Plainly did he go/He happened on a hunger/ That grew into his mind/ And soon it rang like thunder/ Shook him from inside”.
Though not in so many words, again falsetto with electric piano and percussive backing and brass flourishes, the narcotic blues Shalom speaks to the Israel/Palestine conflict but lines like “Waiting for war to come/Devil may care where it’s coming from” and “Run me down on mainstreet/From your horse on high/Take me out and shoot me/Under cloak of night” have a more universal resonance.
It shares its theme with the other standout, the haunted, hollow and despair-soaked The Fact, Flannery in husked voice, relating his seeing the body of a young Black man, wanted by the police after stealing his father’s Chrysler, dead on the road after crashing on the Alabama-Georgia state line with Valerie June taking over backed by fiddle to provide the biographical backdrop (“His Momma cried herself to sleep/Every night for many weeks/She had tried to set him straight and raise him right/But the world had cut into his soul/And only so much love can flow/Into a heart that wants to fight”), Flannery returning to offer up “In Atlanta the rain came down/I, a free man, night off on the town/I thanked my mother for love of old/ And I thanked the world/For sparing my soul”.
Elsewhere, with its keyboard drone and beats framework, the verses and delivery of Young take inspiration from rap, and especially an interview with Tupac Shakur sampled on a Kendrick Lamar album, about picking your fights when you’re young and having the energy and willingness to carry them off, but also how self-doubt can be masked by an aggressive front (“Young and ready, young will testify into the night,’ come get me’/All about you, every shred of pain, felt again, you mark me”). In his notes, he says it “suggests that, in young people, aggression and opposition can be more rooted in internal individual struggles than a rational fight against a perceived wrong in the world”.
The quest for refuge and peace resurfaces on the romantic caressing piano and steady drums beat of Morning Rain with its distant echoes of early Morrison, things coming to a close with more Van mingled with The Band flavours of What They Say with its sketch of an old soul among the lost and lonely down on the Reeperbahn (“Cryin’ for their moms/Hangin’ for a smoke”) always waiting for some sort of salvation that never arrives, with actions speaking louder than words. Finally, with one last collaboration, this time with Andrew House, part of Flannery’s Christy Skulls side project, it ends with Push The Cart and another reflection on the passing years (“This the cart that I used to push when I was a young babe …This is the tree that I used to climb when I was a young child”) and an echo of Dylan Thomas’s rage against the dimming of the light because “It will be dark if you don’t”, a call always “beat the heart… dream the dream…push the cart”.
Not yet 40, but with a voice and a heart grained by lifetimes beyond his years, Flannery has long been a superstar in Ireland; it’s about time the rest of the world caught up, and this outstanding album should really do the trick.
UPCOMING TOUR DATES
September 21st – Americanafest -Nashville TN
September 22nd – Zanzabar – Louisville KY
September 23rd – The Ark – Ann Arbor MI
September 24th – Horseshoe Tavern – Toronto ON
September 26th – Le Poisson Rouge – New York NY
September 27th – Crystal Ballroom – Somerville MA
September 28th – Word Barn – Exeter NH
September 29th – Parlor Room – Northampton MA
September 30th – The Falcon – Marlboro NY
October 1st – NPR Mountain Stage – Blacksburg VA, USA
October 12th – The Empire, Belfast NI
October 13th – The Spirit Store, Dundalk IE – SOLD OUT
October 14th – The Spirit Store, Dundalk IE – SOLD OUT
October 19th – The Royal Theatre, Castlebar, Mayo IE – SOLD OUT
October 20th – The Social Live, Donegal IE
October 21st – Sandinos, Derry NI
October 22nd – Hawkswell Theatre, Sligo IE
October 26th – DeBarras, Clonakilty, IE – SOLD OUT
October 27th – DeBarras, Clonakilty IE – SOLD OUT
October 28th – Connollys of Leap, Leap IE
October 28th – INEC, Killarney, IE
October 29th – Spiegeltent, Wexford IE – SOLD OUT
November 6th – Backstage, Munich DE
November 7th – Club Stereo, Nuremberg DE
November 8th – Ostpol, Dresden DE
November 9th – Prachtwerk, Berlin DE
November 10th – Nochtwache, Hamburg DE
November 11th – KGB Club, Langenberg DE
November 12th – Nachtleben, Frankfurt DE
November 13th – Blue Shell, Cologne DE
November 21st – GC De Wildeman, Herent BE
November 22nd – Paterskerk, Eindhoven NL
November 23rd – Bitterzoet, Amsterdam NL
November 25th – Sønderborghus, Sønderborg DK
November 26th – Vega, Copenhagen DK
November 28th -VoxHall, Aarhus DK
November 29th – Gimle, Roskilde DK
December 2nd – Lafayette, London UK
December 15th – Glor, Ennis IE
December 29th – Roisin Dubh, Galway IE
December 30th – Roisin Dubh, Galway IE
For tickets, visit: https://www.mickflannery.com/tour