(2021) O'Connell & Love - Will You Be There  


Review:
Will You Be There is the second joint project by Alabama 3’s Larry Love and songwriting partner Brendan O’Connell, co-produced by dance maestro Wizard (a.k.a. Greg Fleming), is a musically variegated affair. O’Connell’s assorted musical influences complement Love’s familiar laid back whisky vocal delivery, the opening trumpet coloured title track swaying on a Latin-like rhythm that’s far more upbeat than the environmental apocalypse theme of the lyrics (“Will you be there in your automatic car talking about pollution? / Will you be there when they stare from their mausoleums? / Or will you breathe in the air and realise there’s nothing left – strange emissions?”), although doom does come with defiance rather than resigned acceptance (“I’m gonna roll the wagons round tight / This circle will not be broken / They can launch their missiles / We’ll search the skies / We might be beaten but it ain’t over ‘til it’s over”). The scampering shuffle of Hurry Home keeps largely within similar musical parameters, again juxtaposing rhythmic bounce with such downbeat lyrics as “Please don’t hurry home baby/‘Cos loneliness is this empty town/Since you’ve been gone/No vacancies and the shutters are down” and, touching on refugee issues, “the river’s so unforgiving/ Even the smugglers get double crossed/You can pay the ferryman/But you’ll still get lost”. The loss and abandonment there echoes in the funky bluesy shuffle If Love Is All You’ve Got (“you beg for your Mamma/You beg for your Pa/But they left town in a stolen car”), where, with June Miles-Kingston’s gospel backing, love isn’t the familiar lifebelt when you’re drowning (“if love is all you got/Well baby that ain’t a lot/‘Cos what you got ain’t got you anywhere”), though the line “you try to forget about the plan/And the substances you’ve been smuggling from Moscow/Via London to Penang” is decidedly enigmatic in context. Taking more of a pub rock country path, the wryly playful I Got A Woman has the narrator nursing a whisky as he offloads his complicated romantic entanglements on the barmaid (“I got a woman promises me heaven/I got a woman giving me hell/I got a woman says I’m gonna get better/I got a woman says I’ll never get well”) and sports the inspired line “I got a woman dances like a dentist/Pulls my teeth then shows me the door”. There are a fair few numbers about matters of a bruised heart, two favourites being the wistful barroom-stoked memories of The Belle of St Clare (“With my dreams she went flying/In a silver jet plane /All my blue sky thinking /Won’t bring her back again”) which brings mandolin and strings to play for a folksy-country swayer that’s one part Gram and one part Ronnie Lane, and the sparser fingerpicked acoustic country Don’t Turn Me Away which offers another note of yearning (“Take a bet on me/Maybe I’ll gamble on you/Let’s risk it all /For a little bit of something more”) with Stephanie Clift on harmonies and a lyric that also manages to reference the nativity, gambling, booze, and a timely lonely at Christmas with an empty loving cup. Riding a driving beat that suggests Gentle On My Mind on uppers, Riddles In The Sand offers another busted relationship, this time with a retort to Dylan’s ‘Just Like a Woman’ in the line “You can ache just like a woman/I can break just like a man” alongside addiction (“I’ve been looking so long for some new kind of kick/Had enough of blunt needles and those dirty hits/You got so disappointed when I had to admit/I couldn’t resist I couldn’t help myself”), again neatly mixing metaphors, shaken not stirred. There are more needles to be found (“here comes your great, great, great grandfather /He went to war in 1839/For God for the Queen and for opium /You burn your silver spoon on the dark side tonight”) in the measured bluesy keyboards-backed stroll of You’re Gonna Need Someone, another possible Dylan nod compounded with traces of Cohen and Elvis swagger, and referencing the death in 2012 of the Tetrapak heiress, about how at some point or another, no matter how far up the social ladder you are, we’re all, well, gonna need someone. There’s another dose of regrets and reminiscences to be found, accompanied by shimmering strings, in the folksier When You Were The Moonlight with its retro echoes of crooning balladry that, as the years mount up, returns to the theme of being “more alone than alive” and looking to rekindle the old flames the narrator once threw cold water on. Then, as you might suspect, the jogging countrified, brushed snares and brass flourishes of Let The Music Set You Free is firmly upbeat and dancing, sounding a familiar note about love and music bringing a divided society together and the belief that even in a heart of darkness there can be found light. And so it is that it rides off on notes of hope, firstly with the country-pop Jim Webb-feel of If I Don’t Get Lost, which adopts the position that you have to get lost in order to be found with its tip to St Christopher, the patron saint of travellers, and, finally, returning to the image of dancing into the apocalypse (“let’s celebrate now because we’re going to nowhere, at least that’s somewhere…Hold my hand, ain’t no need to be lonely/On the last day of this wonderful, wonderful world”) on the self-explanatory titled It’s So Good To Be Alive. “Are you ready to be wonderful?” Love asks. With its calls to stand up and be counted and to live now and not regret later, this album clearly suggests the duo were most certainly well-prepared.





Track Listing:
01. Will You Be There? (4:56)
02. Hurry Home (3:11)
03. If Love is All You Got (4:11)
04. I Got a Woman (3:42)
05. The Belle of Clare (3:49)
06. Don't Turn Me Away (feat. Stephanie Clift) (5:31)
07. Riddles In the Sand (feat. Stephanie Clift) (3:15)
08. You're Gonna Need Someone (4:15)
09. When You Were the Moonlight (4:32)
10. Let the Music Set You Free (3:55)
11. If I Don't Get Lost (3:18 )
12. It's So Good To Be Alive (4:37)


Media Report:
Genre: folk-rock, pop
Country: UK
Format: FLAC
Format/Info: Free Lossless Audio Codec, 16-bit PCM
Bit rate mode: Variable
Channel(s): 2 channels
Sampling rate: 44.1 KHz
Bit depth: 16 bits