Stellar new album shooting for those stars over Kinvara

A Different View with Dave O’Connell

Who’d have thought that the celestial canvass over South Galway could ever be captured so hauntingly in words and music, as they have been on Declan O’Rourke’s hugely personal new album, which has just gone on release to understandable acclaim?

The Stars over Kinvara is an ode to the place he chose to make his home, returning to his ancestral roots, the place of his grandfather Miko Killeen, as he reveals in the song – and it’s also an explanation to his son of how deeply his love of this land runs.

He sings of the night he brought his wife and new-born baby home for the first time – and he had to pull the car in around Ballindereen.

“I had never seen

Such a sky of gems that gleamed

Orion was out, and the starry Plough

All the night was on display

Over The Burren, the road, and the bay

There were ten more lights that shone

For each one of our own passed on

And I dreamed that Miko too

Was shining down on you”

With Arrivals, O’Rourke has quite simply produced a beautiful, spellbinding album.

Produced with the lightest of touches by the great Paul Weller, it ensures the unique voice and wonderful lyrics take centre stage – enhanced, not overpowered, by the stripped-back accompaniment.

Weller once described O’Rourke’s debut single, as ‘possibly the greatest song written in the last 30 years’.

It might be hyperbole coming from anyone else, but the pair have become firm friends, and Weller’s respect for O’Rourke’s craft is evident in the way that he strips back everything else to let the words and the lyrics breathe.

Because O’Rourke is a unique singer – but he’s also a poet, with a love of language and imagery that lifts the soul and the goose bumps in equal measure.

For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.

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