Ireland is an island green with the magic of the Hill People, full of the manuscripts of great writers. The island of the first slaves of the British Empire, the explosions in Ulster and Catholic oaths. Here, a rainbow will point the way to wealth, while leprechauns are sloshing moonshine in the company of hard workers in old Man O’Reilly’s pub (well, Murphy, or Kilpatrick, or… You’ll see leprechauns in every pub there if you settle down properly!). The music here sounds reckless and shrill, as if tomorrow will never come: violins saddle galloping tambourines, bagpipes tease bouzouki… In short, every day is a Finnegan memorial. That’s why the name of the capital is so mysterious – Dublin is a Dark Backwater.
In this backwater, the Clabby couple raised five Clabby girls in the mythological last century, the youngest got the name Imelda. Imelda was lucky from a young age – once she got to the elder’s library, she found recordings of Eddie, Gene, and You-know-who there. The discs spun and everything started spinning. Imelda Klebby started performing with her own band at the age of sixteen and often could not break through security to her own concerts due to her youth. The experience of the Dublin clubs gave the necessary roughness to the initially gentle girlish voice and confidence to the initially trembling girlish soul: in 1998, Imelda crosses the Irish Sea, on a neighboring island she is almost immediately noticed and taken into circulation, more precisely, on tour by Mike Sanchez, once the pianist of The Big Town Playboys.
But real life begins four years later, when Miss Clabby becomes Mrs. Darrell Higham. Although the 2003 debut album No Turning Back came out more measured than it should have been, the beginning of an everyday and creative tandem was laid. Darrell, a virtuoso rockabilly guitarist, churned out his own albums based on the precepts of Henry Ford, as long as his young wife was happily married. The band took off in 2008 with the release of the breakthrough Love Tattoo (already under the name Imelda May, with Higham and the Irish Tambourine as regular members of the gang) and everything was spinning off at a gallop. First place in the Irish charts, performances with Jeff Beck, Jools Holland, invitations to the best TV shows, the sparkling releases of Mayhem and Tribal, the birth of a daughter and… Divorce in 2015. For Imelda, it is quite obvious that the world has collapsed.
And the collapsed world suddenly lost the Queen of rockabilly. The first album after the breakup, 2017’s Life Love Flesh Blood, produced by the famous T-Bone Burnett, is full of beauty and pain, but completely devoid of the former enthusiasm. Imelda Mae won’t be the same anymore. Sound designers such as violin maker Davide Rossi (Goldfrapp, string arrangements for the God-defying Coldplay), Tim Bran (dub Dreadzone), Cameron Blackwood (multi-instrumentalist, sound producer, worked with The Horrors, in particular) were involved in the recording of the new material. A special gift is the invited musicians. The cover is a frame cut out of black and white cloth, the pink neon of the title “11 Past The Hour” – it promises to be gloomy in this dark backwater…
11 Past The Hour brings to mind Billie Holiday’s death album “Lady In Satin” and old French films with tragic endings. The exquisitely beautiful melody oozes doom and suffering, until the guitar solo of nightmares breaks the darkness of the night. A song to end with. But…
Breathe – waking up from a terrible dream in the thick darkness and loneliness of a hotel room. Poorly concealed panic and maliciously laughing bow demons. A moaning cello. Fractured waltzing drums. The mantra is “breathe!”…
Made To Love – the morning has come. Bright and sunny. The darkness had disappeared for the time being, reminding of itself only as vague shadows on the periphery of vision. A cheerful pop-rock song with Ronnie Wood on guitar and civil society activists Gina Martin (fighting for the prohibition by law of photographing ladies with mugs under their skirts) and Shola Mos-Shogbamim (this one is simply for the superiority of women on all fronts) singing along.
Different Kinds Of Love is a sketch with a modern country flair. It’s a nice little thing. The co-author is a certain Joe with the iconic surname Rubel. Diamonds is a melodramatic rhythm and blues ballad for a melodramatic movie. Written by May and Sasha Skarbek, known as the author of the opus “You’re Beautiful” for James Blunt.
Don’t Let Me Stand On My Own is a duet with Niall McNamee, a solid Irish almost-folk. What We Did In The Dark is a great fast-paced post-punk, sung together with Miles Kane (The Last Shadow Puppets, The Rascals). He’s asking to join the rotation, I’m sorry for being rude. Can’t Say is a light blues, one of those songs whose virtues are revealed with each new listening. A wildflower, beautiful in its unassuming beauty.
Just One Kiss features Ronnie Wood’s signature chords, playful marimba sounds, and the most overrated musician of the nineties, Noel Gallagher from Oasis, on second vocals. Awkward flirting at the bar. Not the best choice for the first single. Solace – a walk home at sunset. Damn beautiful, too peaceful… Never Look Back – disturbing twilight. The darkness is here again, pulling sticky icy fingers from under the bed. Soon it will be eleven minutes past one again and the nightmares will return…
At its best, “11 Past The Hour” fascinates with every nuance of performance and compositional skill. The worst moments are those where the nerve is replaced by sweet apathy, reminiscent of the consequences of psychiatric intervention. Imelda May may never return to rock and roll, but she’s still an amazing singer and songwriter. You just need to choose your company more carefully: avoid the mawkish bastards, stick to gloomy alleys and joyless types like Burnett or David, say, Lynch, the potential demands. One o’clock struck about ten minutes ago, Moon Dogs, hunting time!
PS: Special attention should be paid to our heroine’s schizophrenic mumbling at the end of some songs…
