Bono´s (and the band´s )long time friend, Gavin Friday, has just released a new album, called "catholic". It`s his first release after a hiatus of 16 years (his last album was 1995 "Shag Tobacco").
Friday has spent the last decade and a half recording film scores (The Boxer, In America, Get Rich Or Die Trying), collaborating with the likes of Scott Walker and the Royal Shakespeare Company, and hanging out with his old mates in U2 on their 360 world tour. He’s gone through some serious personal turmoil since we last saw his name atop an album cover—health issues, the death of his father, and the end of his marriage—and catholic bears all of that hurt in brave and unexpected ways. Operatic in both scope and execution, the album has all the pomp and melancholy of a royal wedding: cellos and violins careen gorgeously, electric guitars soar and dive, and Friday’s voice—a deep, sensual/sinister purr that douses every word with more sex, smoke, and danger than your average Dublin tavern—croons and growls more evocatively than ever before.
“Able” starts us off with a propulsive beat and anthemic synth textures, building to a soaring, keyboard heavy chorus with lines like “I want to be able to hold my own” carrying some extra emotional weight. Echoing Adam ‘N’ Eve’s “Falling Off The Edge of the World”, “Land On The Moon” features a duet with Amy Odell over a lush, hushed bed of acoustic guitars and soft piano chords. Producer Ken Thomas lends a sinister, chilly ‘80s synth-pop vibe to “A Song That Hurts”, featuring the long-awaited return of Friday’s wrenching falsetto and enough haunting background vocals to give you shivers. “The Only One” builds to a majestic swell with its mild electronic beat and dramatic string arrangement, while “Blame” (an ode to Gavin’s late father) relishes gloomily in its mournful cello arrangement, resembling the soundtrack to a long abandoned ghost town saloon.
“The Sun & The Moon & The Stars” feels like a long-lost Cocteau Twins outtake, while the simultaneously sorrowful and uplifting “It’s All Ahead Of You” rises out of a gorgeous chamber melody into a life affirming chorus of blasting trumpets and boisterous violins. Though “Perfume” resurrects the glam rock swagger of past Gavin Friday records, we close out with the one-two funereal punch of “Where’d Ya Go? Gone” and “Lord I’m Coming”, the latter a riveting orchestral hymn of symphonic grandeur that rises into a grandiloquent climax of buzzy synths and sweeping strings.
Though the touch of long-time collaborator Maurice Seezer goes sorely missed, Gavin Friday and new right-hand man Herbie Macken have crafted a consistently elegant, intricately arranged, and stunningly beautiful album well worth the long wait. Often threatening to melt your heart, catholic is a continually rewarding piece of work—a towering achievement of classical grandiosity and modern elusiveness. Leave it up to a sly, mildly-reclusive Irishman to deliver one of 2011’s unexpected master works.
Gavin was interviewed by Mojo for July´s edition.Click on picture to enlarge.
An album worths listening with great melodies and sung with deep voice and enchanting rhythms.
“Did you know that best is yet to come”, he asks in one of his songs, by listening to his new album we may think the best is here to stay.
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