Declan de Barra is an interesting character. Back in Ireland after a long stretch in Australia, where he fronted the well regarded Clann Zu, he is an eco-warrior by disposition. But on the enigmatically titled Song Of A Thousand Birds, he manages to maintain a healthy distance from any tendency to merely preach, instead investing even the most politically loaded tracks with a poetic intimacy. “They cut off our branches,” he sings in the title track, “but we’ll grow them back/ Our roots are too deep/ In this soil burnt and black.” He has an unusual ability to let us paint the big picture ourselves by showing us the miniature. The result is a record that manages to be at once intensely personal and bound up with global concerns.
Among the guests on the album are Richie Egan (Jape) and Ronan O Snodaigh (Kila) – neither known for their shrinking violet tendencies. It comes as something of a surprise, then, to find that the temptation to rip it up has been avoided, with Turlough Gunawardhana’s cello and strings ensuring that the mood is kept downbeat and quiet. There is a hushed late night ambience, like a conversation over a fine malt into the early hours. On occasion, notably the gorgeous ‘Slow Dissolve’, his voice reaches a torch song intensity, while elsewhere he switches from crooner to cathartic roar. There is a touch of the Damien Dempsey’s about ‘Welcome’, which may make an obvious point about immigrants arriving in Ireland, but makes it well. “They’re traitors to our dead,” he says, “to our history abroad/We sailed on coffin ships/to many foreign shores/We were welcomed to their lands/And now the turn is ours.”
Song Of A Thousand Birds is a thoughtful, compelling record that confirms that not all of us are overly impressed with the Ireland of 2006 – or with the place we occupy in the world. Shiny happy people need not apply.