Someone To Dance With

SONNY CONDELL : “Someone To Dance With” (STARC).

I was never a member of the Scullion claque. In the late Seventies and early Eighties many saw them as typifying a generation of Irish songwriters whose art had been unappreciated both at home and abroad. I dissented from that verdict; Scullion had their moments but I also figured they had too many competing ideas and voices and too little genuine coherence.

Then, last summer, I caught Sonny Condell playing the Béal Bocht with Máire Breatnach. There was an unassuming gentleness to his music that seemed once to have been swamped in Scullion. And if I’d once suspected that his songs were often marked by hippie whimsy, now I heard a depth and maturity I hadn’t bothered to notice before. His many advocates’ case started to make sense.

Someone To Dance With will also further his cause. At best, it has a unforced serenity that Scullion often forfeited in their busy haste to impress. Any strange changes are meshed into the music instead of jostling for affect and attention.

One reason must be Condell’s musical partner and co-producer, Máire Breatnach, who refuses the temptation to be a show-stealing violin virtuoso and who only intervenes when it really counts. Check the impressive trance chant of ‘Downrunning’ bolstered by Máire Brennan’s harmonies; Breatnach is patient and only takes fire after Condell and Brennan have established the mood.

Even when Condell is flirting with the mainstream’s idea of a well-made song, there’s a twist. ‘Pleasure’ starts off in Bob Marley terrain but then refuses to take the mock-reggae option; ‘Old Poet’ may be a train tune with a shuffle-beat but Condell switches it down different tracks with a dab of Beatles’ White Album harmonies. ‘Someone To Dance With’ dabs, but it doesn’t smother, the songs in make-up.

Inevitably, it’s an album of memories but the past is valued and pondered upon instead of being trivialised in some instant confessional. Exactly because these songs mean something to Sonny Condell himself, the listener too can be gradually persuaded by his quiet but firm sincerity.

It’s not quite perfect. Towards the end, there’s moments of haziness when the album needs a jolt of renewing energy, though ‘Dream Sequence’ and ‘Pink Promenade’ keep the album cantering through the final furlong. Fans will feel their loyalty confirmed by Someone To Dance With but it’s neutrals who should pay the most attention. They may find it Sonny Condell’s most inviting calling-card.

• Bill Graham