A bar-full of ghosts inhabit the songs of Barry McCormack. Luke Kelly pops in for a pint of plain. Planxty are calling for four balls of malt. And the Clancy Brothers are shooting the breeze in the snug. Former Jubilee Allstar McCormack has created an album of contemporary folk songs, rooted in a tradition that goes back generations.

Opener ‘On The Evening Of The Epiphany’ is an emotional tour de force, the simple combination of voice, guitar and harmonica evoking decades of poverty, oppression and addiction. It’s a far-from-happy tale, from his mother crying “a thousand tears that christened my tiny face” until “two hags follow me around the town, the heroin and the methadone”.

The suffering and anguish mounts as you progress through the album: terminal illness (‘A Husband’s Love’), lost love (‘Idler’s Lament’), sadness (‘The Place Where Fortune Hides’), and loss (‘I Met A Lot Of People Along The Way’). The songs are so beautifully written, though, that the journey is never depressing or dour. In fact, there are elements of humour as black as a Ballivor boghole in tracks like ‘Rowing Boat Song’ and ‘Poor Old Johnny’.

McCormack’s world-weary, beer-stained rasp has the ability to make your neck-hairs rise in unison on the gorgeous ‘Of All The Things I Brought With Me’ or ‘On A May Morning’, first featured on the Other Voices album. The latter is a stunningly beautiful work, based on Tommy Makem’s version of ‘As I Roved Out’.

His irony-free tales of normal people, leading ordinary lives call to mind a melting pot of Brendan Behan, Bob Dylan and Shane McGowan: “Once the jeers of the pissed-up boys and the booze-hags rolled off my back and drifted out to sea/ But now they cut me like a knife and Jesus I feel old/ And I think there’s somewhere else I’d rather be” (‘I Think There’s Somewhere Else I’d Rather Be’).

Despite the litany of miseries that besets McCormack’s characters, the heart of We Drank Our Tears beats with the indomitability of the human spirit and the ever-pervading sense of hope. As he sings himself on the closing track, “After this low we’ll be rising/And We Won’t Fall Again.” Powerful stuff indeed.