Ah…the dreaded second album - it’s not called the ‘difficult’ one for nothing. As an almost necessary evil in the career of any artist, the second album affords fans the opportunity to ascertain where exactly a certain artist’s career is heading, and the artist in question to spread their creative wings. Sometimes, the second album may implode and collapse under the overbearing weight of expectation.
Not so in the case of Mark Geary [pic by Liam Sweeney]. Having created a certain frisson in the singer-songwriter community with his understated debut album 33 1/3 Grand Street, Geary has gained in confidence. Having spent much of last year touring the world, Ghosts paints pictures of scenic journeys, newly visited cities, and as such is gilded with a freshness and lust for life that can only be evoked by someone seeing much of the world for the first time.
Geary certainly hasn’t lost the understated charm and sweet humility that propelled him to success in the first place. He still paints with a supremely subtle palette, although he manages to uncover aspects of the human psyche that other singer-songwriters simply can’t reach.
Live favourites like ‘Ghosts’ and ‘You’re The Only Girl’ sound as resonant and on album as they do in the intimate confines of Geary’s live shows. There’s an almost nostalgic feel to the record, as it somehow evokes the simplicity of rosy-cheeked Irish childhoods. ‘Beautiful’ lodges in the mind like some glorious tumour and ‘Morphine’ is a brooding, though no less affecting track.
At times exalting, yet consistently majestic and rousing, Geary has the talent to survive the implosion of the singer-songwriter scene – if and when it comes