Finishing Strongly

By Joe Kavanagh

Aside from Delorentos In Love With Detail, the first half of 2007 hardly set the music world alight, but if it is true that it's more about how you finish than how you start, then the Irish rock music scene still has much to be hopeful for. Albums like Dave Geraghty's Kill Your Darlings, The Flaws Achieving Vagueness and Declan O'Rourke's Big Bad Beautiful World have all emerged in the past three months and injected promise into a year that was shaping up to be a fallow one. Now another songwriter has emerged with a work that puts her squarely at the forefront of Irish rock and - like O'Rourke - she has undergone somewhat of a transformation in the process. Since her storied emergence on the Irish music scene, Cathy Davey has virtually always seen her name appear regularly with the prefix "promising", a word that is seemingly attached to many but delivered on by few. With the release of her sophomore effort several weeks back, Davey has proven that she is certainly one of the few, capably fashioning her potential into a potent music force that is gradually assuming its own distinct identity.

Born in Dublin, Cathy Davey enjoyed a rather free-spirited upbringing at the hands of her musician father and sculptress mother, as the family spent much of her childhood moving back and forth between Ireland and the UK. Their somewhat nomadic existence meant that she spent long periods away from organized education but even those periods she spent at school often ended in expulsion as she struggled to fit in and deal with authority. Also complicating her life was the fact that she suffered from "sleep paralysis hallucinations" (SPH), a condition that causes her to have vivid dreams coupled with temporary physical incapacitation and one that continues to affect her to this day. Somewhat surprisingly music was not her first choice of escape, but rather art and writing, and she would often stay up into the wee hours filling notebooks with pages of thoughts and pictures ripped from her imagination. In fact, she once confessed that the two biggest musical influences on her life for the longest time were actually The Muppet Show and an old Simon & Garfunkel album that her parents had laying around the house. It was not until her teens that she truly began to identify with music, but even then it was not through a record collection. It was more a case of geography as a brief flirtation with heavy metal led her to the rejuvenated live music scene that sprang up in Dublin in the mid to late 90s. Bands like An Emotional Fish, Something Happens and Revelino all proved to have a powerful affect on Davey, who had by now become sufficiently enchanted to want to seriously pursue a career in the industry.

In 2003 she completed a four-track demo that quickly made the rounds of all the labels in Ireland and in the process generated a wave of excitement that made her the talk of the industry. Without ever having played a gig, she saw herself become the subject of competition as labels jockeyed for her signature. Most demanded to see her perform live, but convinced that she would be unable to find the correct people to do the songs justice in a live setting, she steadfastly resisted and eventually signed on with EMI offshoot, Parlophone. Instead of forcing her to put out an album immediately, the label realized early on that their new signing would need time grow as an artist, if they were to capitalize on their investment, so they allowed Davey a considerable amount of time to develop before demanding an album. Which is not to say that she did not feel pressure, because there were those moments when she felt overwhelmed by the significance of events and thought about packing it all in, before always realizing just how lucky she was to be in such a position. The fact that she also suffered from a two-month long bout of SPH did little to calm her nerves but her fears were soon somewhat allayed when her debut, Come Over EP, scored well with critics and built a groundswell of interest in not just Ireland, but throughout the globe, After seven weeks spent in a Welsh recording studio under the occasionally unorthodox guidance of producer Ben Hillier (Blur), the album was finished and Something Ilk hit shelves in August of 2004. The 14 track effort announced Davey as a singer songwriter with an edge who was unafraid to experiment with sound and atmospherics, exhibiting influences that ranged from Kate Bush to jazz and folk. One reviewer notably, and accurately described her as "Norah Jones... with b***s", and her voice also saw her draw comparisons to Goldfrapp and Cerys Mathews.

Now Davey has returned to the headlines for all the right reasons with the release of what must be considered a strong candidate to take home some silverware at the upcoming Irish Meteor Music Awards and possibly even the Choice Music Prize, which recognizes Irish critics' favorite album of the year. Displaying a multitude of new influences that range from Blondie to Bjork, Tales Of Silversleeve is the butterfly to Something Ilk's chrysalis, a completely contemporary work that bends and breaks the singer/songwriter formula that characterizes her previous work. The 11 tracks offer a perfect counterpoint between darkness and light, with oodles of pop sensibilities that bode well for future single releases. Davey was recently lamenting the fact that she is always being compared to someone or another. If she continues to create works such as this then it will soon be others who are being compared to Cathy Davey and it might be some time before she makes it back to that little flat in Dublin.