Ciaran Lavery - Live At The Mac (2016)

When George Martin convinced Paul McCartney to use a string quartet on Yesterday it was absolutely ground breaking for a beat group. This was even before Rubber Soul and Revolver took music into imaginative arrangements, production and instrumentation. It might even have opened the door to the transition from pop to rock. Fifty years later and Ciaran Lavery takes George Martin’s template for an entire album. Live at The Mac, Lavery’s second album release of the year, is the one he recorded first, with a string quartet Last December.

The date of the recording is important when you start to analyse the set list. The majority of the set list is not from Lavery’s album Let Bad In but from earlier releases Not Nearly Dark and Kosher. Also only by doing it a year ago could we find Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas on a record coming out at Christmas. Doing a Christmas classic in July for December release wouldn’t quite work at a concert. That Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas is a good place to start waxing lyrical about Lavery’s amazing voice. A few years ago it was the most played song from Michael Bublé’s Christmas album. Canadian Bublé is recognised as having a golden voice. Well Aghagallon’s Lavery blows Bublé out of the water. This man’s voice is a force of nature. It is so rich. Compared to a Hozier it comes across as a little understated but more authentic for it. I cannot get enough of it.

As well as the Christmas song there are two other covers here that showcase that voice beautifully. It brings such emotion to Joy Division’s Love Will Tear Us Apart and with the haunting mood of the strings, Bruce Springsteen’s Streets Of Philadelphia is astonishing, dare I call it near definitive. Philadelphia is not only the American reference here. American and Left For America gives hints at Lavery’s Americana influence. Perhaps we should mint a new genre - Lough Neagh Shore Americana. The ultimate highlight for me is the same as on Let Bad In. Tell Them All is one of my favourite songs of the entire year. It gives a voice with few peers a song with few peers. Ciaran Lavery is a talent that Northern Ireland should be proudly sharing with the world.

TRACKLIST

01. Awful Love (Live At The Mac)
02. Left For America (Live At The Mac)
03. Streets Of Philadelphia (Live At The Mac)
04. Lovers Who Make Love (Live At The Mac)
05. American (Live At The Mac)
06. Little More Time (Live At The Mac)
07. Tell Them All (Live At The Mac)
08. Shame (Live At The Mac)
09. Return To Form (Live At The Mac)
10. Orphan (Live At The Mac)
11. Love Will Tear Us Apart (Live At The Mac)
12. Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas (Live At The Mac)