This love letter to Dublin Port is a wonderful representation of Irish artists, from trad to electro and from folk to rock ballad
The stark beauty of Dublin Port and the winding course of the River Liffey is celebrated on this collection of new songs from the likes of Paul Noonan of Bell X1, Jape, John Sheahan of The Dubliners and Lisa O’Neill.
It is a wildly genre skipping collection that takes in trad, quirky electronic minimalism, folk and rock and for that alone, Starboard Home is a real treasure trove of contemporary Irish music.
It opens with restraint as Noonan - who curated the project from a commission by Dublin Port - sketches a evocation of the cranes that stand guard at the port on Lonely Giants. The song moves with a real slow motion grace but owes a bit too much to Radiohead
Gemma Hayes’ Caught In The Rapids is aquatic and calming stuff but, as ever with the Tipperary singer, there are dark undercurrents and a tug of melancholia. She makes a pithy, well-observed reference to The Rising when she sings tremulously about “the wounds of a brutal sweet ’16”.
Declan O'Rourke
Hailing from Raytown, Paul Cleary of The Blades is a man who knows Dublin Port better than most and he has written an elegant chamber pop piece entitled Kingfisher Blue which is reminiscent of Blue Period, The Smithereens’ yearning duet with Belinda Carlisle. Declan O’Rourke, one the best songwriters in Ireland, intros Colossus with gorgeous Spanish guitar on an atmospheric, half-spoken, half-sung reverie which comes close to the surreal beauty of Coney Island by Van Morrison.
The Starboard Home collective at one of their recent sell-out shows at the NCH in Dublin
The redoubtable John Sheahan of The Dubliners traces Anna Livia Plurabelle from high up in Kippure and follows its course over bog and plain to the Irish Sea on Liffeysong. He invokes bridges along the way - from O’Donovan Rossa, Joyce, and Beckett, and more recent addition, Rosie Hackett - and stops off to admire the Conference Centre, “tilting a beer can” at the wretched skeleton of the abandoned Anglo Irish office block.
Lisa O'Neill
But it is Cavan woman Lisa O’Neill who steals the march on the Dubs with her brittle folk song Rock The Machine. With sparse, eerie banjo notes and a mounting drone, she tells a bitter tale of the ravages of automation on the working man a century ago and it's a story which has lost none of its resonance today.
It can all be a bit poetic and awestruck in places and perhaps some scabrous, dock rocking beats would have been welcome but Starboard Home hums with all the industry, possibility and pure mystery of Dublin Port itself. Tis a sturdy craft.
Alan Corr @corralan
