PALACE SONGS: “Hope” (Domino)

I AM totally devoted to Palace. Last year’s There Is No One What Will Take Care Of You was my album of the year, while ‘Ohio River Boat Song’ (not on any album) was my single of the year. Hope is only twenty minutes long but it is twenty minutes of some of the best music I have heard this or any other year.

Palace Songs were originally called Palace Brothers, then just Palace. Their singer and centre now goes under the moniker of Push. He believes in the song. He cares nothing for fame or for people asking him about how the world revolves. He wants to write and sing songs. He’s a songsmith, and in this sense he walks the road of the blues and folk.

Irish names are more than well-represented on Hope. There’s Sean O’Hagan, formerly of MicroDisney, on piano; Liam Hayes on piano, organ, electric guitar; Rian Murphy on drums; and Briana Corrigan, on harmonies. The mood of Hope is love, melancholy and waiting. “If you wait another day/I will wait another day,” Push sings on ‘Agnes Queen Of Sorrows’. Then on ‘All Gone’ the singer opens up his character’s heart: “It’s a dream to really be here with you/One in the morning, just going on two/With nothing but just to snuggle and coo/It’s a great thing, a really cool thing to do.”

Music has this power, hasn’t it? To lift you out of whatever you’re in and let you float. To set you free. The blues and folk will always be listened to as long as we love and long. And Palace music will always be listened to because it understands the heart.

• Gerry McGovern