Christy Moore has the enviable knack of capturing the national mood, whether in his heavy-duty political songs or the perceptive observations on ordinary life he so often brings to the table.

He also has an uncanny ability to adapt songs by others that take on an even greater potency when he makes them his own. Chief amongst the latter here is Jim Page’s ‘Palestine’, which underscores tellingly how the current American-sponsored savagery being perpetrated by the state of Israel has been long in the making, with a civilised and just resolution as far away as ever, or perhaps even further.

With a wistful piano for company, he movingly speaks Mike Harding’s poem ‘Sunflowers', evoking the possibility of optimism in Ukraine after Russia’s invasion. But the question that hovers in the background, once again, is when – if ever?

Moore also gets inside two songs by Briany Brannigan of A Lazarus Soul. ‘Black and Amber', sung acapella with Christy’s son Andy, spotlights the stark reality of the devastating social consequences that alcohol can trigger when things go awry. With ‘Lemon Sevens, meanwhile, he delivers an equally unsettling depiction of homelessness and its impact on real people.

This album is not about winners. Christy reveals that reality is far too often tragic, in his spoken word treatment of ‘The Life and Soul’ – it’s about Ann Lovett, who died in childbirth in Granard, Co. Longford, at fifteen; and, again, in James Cramer’s ‘Lyra McKee’, a song honouring the young Belfast journalist murdered by Nationalists during a Derry riot.

There’s more of the bad stuff in Pete Kavanaugh’s ‘Darkness Before the Dawn' concerning the murder of the Doran Family in Carnlough, Co. Armagh, in 1921, a story with layers of treachery and tragedy alike. Martin Leahy’s ‘Snowflakes’ – another acapella recording which confirms that sometimes Christy’s voice is all a great song needs – tackles cowardly on-line trolls and self-styled patriots.

‘Boy in the Wild', part-written by the late Wally Page, and completed by Moore himself, is replete with delicious harmonies from son Andy: it distils the reflective warmth of Moore’s voice, perfect for a song that reminds a son that his father is at hand to help when needed.

And so it goes. Although A Terrible Beauty is clearly not completely devoid of hope, if you’ve come here seeking relief from the horrors of the modern universe you’ve come to the wrong place. Instead you’ll get a triple measure of Christy’s musical witness to the awful things we do to each other far, far too often.

We used to call it protest music – the tragedy is that there’s still as much to protest about.

File under “very uneasy listening.”

Out now

9/10