Damien Dempsey
Album: It's All Good - The Best of Damien Dempsey
Label: Clear/IRL
Tracks: 29
Website: http://www.damiendempsey.com/

To name your first album 'They Don't Teach This Shit in School' will certainly get you noticed.. Some fifteen years and six albums later Damian Dempsey released his retrospective collection 'It's All Good - The Best of Damien Dempsey' in February which sat at the top of the Irish Album charts for a fair number of weeks. Now that the marketing razzmatazz that surrounds an artist being pushed by his label died down a while ago, what is the album really like? Firstly as with all compilations the purpose of the product is no doubt to increase the fan base through attracting casual listeners and for someone who has had little commercial success this may prove difficult outside the home base. Secondly, there are two versions the "De Luxe" with an album worth of bonus songs including 'Dublin Town' and 'St Patrick's Day' and the standard version. Why or why do some Record Companies only send standard copies out for review when said product is available in two formats: it's like a Publishing House sending half a book out to be reviewed!!! IRL sit up and take notice!!.....rant over!

For the unacquainted, Damian Dempsey or "Damo" to his fans is part of the Irish pedigree of singer songwriters from Luke Kelly to Christy Moore who fuses different elements of music with conscious raw lyrics based on social commentary with Mr. Dempsey particularly concentrating on the aftermath of the Celtic Tiger economic period. Take a mix of traditional Irish music add in folk; rock and a pinch of reggae in conjunction with lyrics which weave a story like Springsteen and Dylan reflecting the plight of the underdog, the downtrodden and those at the edge of society, and with wordplay reminiscent of the great Dublin writers such as James Joyce, Oscar Wilde and Roddy Doyle, delivered in a vocal style akin to a rocky Christy Moore: you have, ladies and gentlemen; Damo. Critics have heaped praise on him: The Sunday Times have called him a 'Working Class Hero' whilst several newspapers christened him 'The Irish Bob Marley'.

'It's All Good' has a total of 29 songs over 120 minutes and gives a good but long introduction to the casual listener. The album is produced by John Reynolds who has worked with Damo throughout his career first producing Dempsey's second album 'Seize the Day' in 2003 and who I remember as the drummer for Jah Wobble, and the excellent sleeve booklet tells how from their first meeting Reynolds was to influence Damo's life and songwriting. The title track opens the album and features backing vocals from Reynolds' ex-wife, Sinead O'Connor who was one of the first to champion Dempsey at the start of his career and she also sings backing vocals on 'Negative Vibes'.

There are times on the album you can definitely hear that Christy Moore influenced Damo's writing and vocal delivery especially on the suicide ballad 'Chris and Stevie' which is pure melancholy to its core. The dread and anger of the half rapped 'Serious', one of my faves with hypnotic Tuareg influenced lead guitar line to the fore which leads into the biting and ferociously delivered 'Colony'. These three tracks encapsulate the breadth and influences of Damian Dempsey's music. There are several covers of Irish standards from Dempsey's 2008 rites of passage album The Rocky Road in the form of 'The Rocky Road', and 'Kelly From Killan' featuring the Dubliners John Sheahan and Barney McKenna and my favourite version of Shane MacGowan's touching 'A Rainy Night in Soho'. Added to this is 'The Auld Triangle' a 2010 Christmas charity single recorded as a duet with Glen Hansard which ironically is probably Dempsey's most commercial success.

Other standout tracks are the mournful 'Kilburn Stroll', and 'Party On' where there is a lovely blend of a rock driving acoustic guitar and uillean pipes, the melting pot of styles which is 'Maasai' and 'Ghosts of Overdoses' bluntly illuminating the devastation created by drugs among the urban poor. The song contains the couplet "and the ghosts overdoses, replace the ghosts of tuberculosis" which concisely describes the Irish urban poor in the 20's and 30's with those at the end of the 20th century. Even Oscar Wilde gets in on 'Spraypaint Backalley' with the line "we are all in the gutter but some of us are looking at the stars".

Both formats include two new brand new tracks recorded especially for the album "St Patrick's Brave Brigade" and "Happy Days". The former; only the second song I've heard about the Brigade who fought for the Mexicans against America in 1847, for me, isn't as poignant as the David Rovics song "Saint Patrick's Battalion" which has been covered by the Glasgow Irish rockers The Wakes, but this comes a close second.

'It's All Good' is very much warts and all. It demonstrates on one album how Dempsey has now grown into an accomplished vocalist which cuts through the music and how his songwriting skills go from strength to strength. There is a full box of emotions captured in these songs which portray modern working class life in Dublin and gives the answer to why he has been called the Irish Springsteen. Alas, unlike Springsteen he remains only a basic guitar strummer, but I suppose if you can write killer music and lyrics we can all forgive him. If you love your music honest, powerful, full of passion and vitality, with lyrics which weave countless touching stories, this album needs to be added to your collection.

Chris Light