Mark Mulcahy - The Gus

Way back in the mid-Eighties I was really taken by the early records of American band Miracle Legion, particularly their debut EP The Backyard. They existed clearly within the shadow of R.E.M. an apparent and immediate formative influence, but did good things with it, churning out a bunch of evocative and memorable songs.

Since then, lead singer Mark Mulcahy the band's lead singer, has put out a number of solo albums of note. The Gus, his new record is just the latest. It's all languid thoughtfulness, both lyrically and musically, songs and sentiments most obviously grounded in the tradition of Dylan and Van Morrison and Mulcahy's own not inconsiderable ouevre. 

Songs stop and start, stop and start, a middle aged man considering the universe. There's no lack of melody here, always one of  Mulcahy's gifts and no lack of understated poetry either. He knows how to take note of the small random things that life throws at us, listen to Later for the Box, the fourth song on here for how we make our way through the small inventory of tasks that life lays before us and how they offer us the opportunity to detect the remarkable in the mundane. The divine in the detail. His glass is clearly half full.

The singer songwriter offers plenty of scope for the short story writer, (see the Neutrals review I wrote a couple of days back), and Mulcahy is a master of the form now decades into his career. There's nothing overweening here, his work never tips into the overblown. He's something of a skilled tightrope walker. Musically he isn't a million miles from artists I don't care for who work in a similar medium, but who operate in broader strokes and play to the back of the venue; Eddie Vedder, Counting Crows and Hothouse Flowers came to my mind. Mulcahy by contrast seems more intent to speak to those most immediately in front of him in the first few rows.

The Gus is unlikely to pull up any trees commercially but should find a ready and appreciative audience among the constituency that Mulcahy has established for himself. I definitely count myself among that number. It's another fine record to add to the pile of fine records he's put out over the years. We should treasure artists like this.