Declan O’Rourke: Arrivals – Impressive record that spotlights the journeys taken

As an artist he has travelled a long way both geographically and metaphorically – so it makes sense that Declan O’Rourke’s seventh album should be called Arrivals. The musician was born in Dublin, spent his childhood in the Australian town of Kyabram (as the title of his 2004 debut acknowledged) and he now resides in the Galway village of Kinvara.

Of course, O’Rourke’s “arrival” as an artist took place long before now. Over the years he has established himself as the quintessential songwriter’s songwriter, his work praised and covered by a multitude of big names, from Eddi Reader to Josh Groban to Christy Moore; Paul Weller famously cited his track Galileo as the song “he wished he’d written”. The link with Weller has endured ever since – so much so that the mod legend has produced this record, which was also recorded at Weller’s Black Barn studio in Surrey during lockdown last year.

Here, O’Rourke draws both on personal stories (the beautiful The Stars Over Kinvara is a multi-generational tribute to his grandfather’s life in the village he now calls home, while The Harbour recounts an everyday tale of big dreams in an ordinary life) and the wider world for inspiration. Olympian tells the story of young Syrian swimmer Yusra Mardini and her fraught journey across the Aegean Sea to escape her war-torn homeland – one of two quasi-political songs (along with Have You Not Heard The War Is Over) that make their point subtly but effectively.

Convict Ways laments the men forced to travel across the globe to pay for their crimes, “being slaves without the name of slaves”, while the title track is an homage to emigrants, O’Rourke positioning himself in the arrivals hall of an airport and imagining the reunifications and emotional conversations happening around him.

Throughout it all, his mellifluous voice is a balm, brimming with texture and character as he recounts these varied stories. His guitar-playing is simple and largely folk- and acoustic-based: The Harbour could be a track from Paul Brady’s heyday, Convict Ways sounds like a timeless folk song, while the melancholic piano-led title track is understatement epitomised.

Andy Sells Coke is an outlier in this respect – the only track to rope in a full coterie of instruments for a loose, 1960s pop jangle that’s both convincing and enjoyable. On closing track This Thing That We Share, O’Rourke could be mistaken for Richard Hawley, his croon complemented by soft percussion, a trickle of piano (played by Weller) and soft saxophone that transports you to the wee hours of a darkened jazz club.

An impressive, low-key record that doesn’t need to shout to make itself heard.

declanorourke.com