While it is often true that your inner voice is your harshest critic, it would seem that Edmund Enright is far too severe on himself. Apparently, Mundy doesn’t rate himself too highly as a songwriter but to these ears Raining Down Arrows is a winner, displaying a far more mature songwriting style than either of his previous outings, while remaining true to the Birr-man’s stance as a likeable everyman. I’m not suggesting for a minute that Mundy is acting in any way. Indeed, I think the Offaly singer would find it impossible to adopt any persona but his own: his songs always seem to ring with a refreshing truth and honesty.
Who else could have written about something so personal, and yet at the same time so ordinary, as getting in trouble with his partner for staying out drinking with his mates all night (‘By Her Side’) and having to answer to his better half in the morning: “I gotta get home early, because my head’s beginning to tingle/ The conversation is getting scary, ’cos all the boys are single”.
Similarly, the country rock-tinged ‘Love And Confusion’ is about, eh, being in love and being confused, while ‘You Are The One’ is so unashamedly romantic as to give David Kitt’s Square One album a run for its money. Meanwhile, ‘Soul Mate’s uber-catchy chorus is guaranteed to be belted out with gusto by Mundy’s legions of fans at venues all over the country this summer, and the warm and fuzzy electric guitar-driven ‘Too High’ is surely a single in waiting.
‘Car Pound’ is almost cinematic in its depiction of being stuck in school on a Monday afternoon, staring out the window and wishing the time away until the bell rings for the end of the scholastic day. Bizarrely, this white trash, trailer park adolescence as viewed through the eyes of a BIFFO sounds frighteningly on the money, displaying a tenderness that you just don’t get with Eminem: “And you can bring your girl along if she brings a lovely friend/And we’ll show them what us town-boys do with time to spend.”
Recorded in August 2003 in Austin, Texas, with Mark and Nina Addison, and mixed by Dave Odlum in France’s Black Box Studios (fast becoming a home from home for Irish musicians in general and the Odlum brothers in particular), Raining Down Arrows sounds uncluttered and effective, with little in the way of bells or whistles to take away from the immediacy of the recordings. Indeed, on tracks like the gentle ‘Something Good’, the gorgeous ‘All The Love’ or the affecting ‘Strange Hotel’, it seems that there’s almost a mini-Mundy performing live inside your speakers.
The title track, however, is arguably Mundy’s finest moment to date. Musically, it’s pretty much just acoustic guitar and vocals, with a side order of slide, bass and drums, but Mundy’s voice has never sounded so full or so emotive as he narrates the litany of relationship disasters that have led him to this state of drained melancholy.
Simply recorded and performed, Mundy’s third album sees him doing what he does best: writing strong songs that burn with a fire that’s born of honesty and experience. You can’t really ask for more than that.