Sonny Condell & Patrick Kehoe – Seize The Day album review: a seamless collaboration

Seize The Day
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Artist: Sonny Condell & Patrick Kehoe
Genre: Singer / Songwriter
Label: Independent Release

It's an irony that this latest project from Sonny Condell with poet Patrick Kehoe illuminates the very essence of his songwriting strengths.

Condell’s writing has always had an ephemeral and elusive quality, married with a deep feeling for the sublime, and a fondness for out of kilter rhythms that rattle and hum long after a song has evaporated.

Kehoe’s lens is suitably wide of angle to be possessed by Condell – seamlessly. Familiar motifs of city and of time, of wells and of swirling seasons recur – but with a freshness and lightness of being: surely the quarry of all artists worth their salt.

Musically dreamlike and hypnotic, (at times evocative of Nick Drake), with some exceedingly fine boned percussion shimmying up alongside Condell's considered guitar lines, Seize The Day speaks just of that. Carpe diem indeed.

Siobhán Long

Siobhán Long

Siobhán Long, a contributor to The Irish Times, writes about traditional music and the wider arts