Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 8.5/10
Rich McMahon exemplifies the thought that eventually you can and must find your own voice in which to relate tales and stories to. It is an obligation to humanity to be able to look at people in the face and whisper a truth to them and hope that it some small way it opens up a dialogue between souls, or if that fails then at least the artist has opened themselves up to an audience willing to listen.
Songs of Exile, Love and Dissent places a bridge, a connection between listener and performer that many in the artistic world would covet and yearn for. It is the bridged gap between understanding and ignorance of cultures and different times and in which many in the Midlands would have felt very keenly. It takes someone who was bought up in the divide in which to talk openly of the disagreements and internal rebellion that arose as a certain generation were perhaps unsure of which way to look to home.
Rich McMahon brings his own truth to the fore and it is simply an enjoyable and fulfilling experience filled with pathos, longing, objectivity and loss. It is an album which is rich in its lyrical quality and delivers more than a passing thought to the idea of banishment and being outcast from society and from those you have come to love.
Tracks such as the romantic and expressive The Barman’s Tale, the sadness in reflection in My Beautiful Broken Guitar, the majesty of Ten Thousand Miles From Dublin and the grace that resides within the heart of A Mother’s Lament, all shape the way the album is heard and taken to heart and played around with as an emotion and as a tool to get conversation flowing.
For anyone who ever felt as though they were pushed out of their group, the society they had been placed, even thrust into, from the start only to find that life could be snatched off into a different direction, to sit down and take in the weight of words employed by Rich McMahon, is to know that someone, it matters not where, is thinking the same as you.
Songs of Exile, Love and Dissent is to know that there is a friend out there whose words can be just as comforting as being adored.
Rich McMahon’s Songs of Exile, Love and Dissent is released on March 9th.
Ian D. Hall