Caroline Grogan, Senior Reporter
@cgrogancourant
I was on a plane to a small town in Ohio, maybe smaller than Ciaran Lavery’s own Northern Ireland hometown, when I decided to put my headphones in, lean my seat back and listen to his latest album in its entirety. It felt fitting to listen through headphones while the rest of humanity lay thousands of miles below; Lavery fashions himself to be the penitent while his listeners assume the role of the priest, sitting behind a latticed screen and absorbing (and maybe absolving) his confessions.
I had to turn the volume up all the way to hear his soft voice over the whir of the plane. Behind that softness, though, is a ferocity and sense of self-assuredness, possibly the kind that needs to be feigned in order to eventually be felt in truth.
Vulnerability and self-assuredness may seem antithetical at first glance, but there is an air of both throughout Lavery’s confessional album. Before Sweet Decay’s release on April 13, Lavery sent fans an email intimating that, in order to create the album, he had to take a brutally honest inventory of the parts of himself that were hardest to acknowledge.
Lavery’s album feels like a coming-to-terms-with, like breaking the surface of water and taking that first shuddering, uncontrollable gasp of air followed by the tired bliss of being able to breathe freely again.
The greatest weapon in Lavery’s arsenal is his knack for heart-wrenchingly beautiful lyrics. On the song To Chicago, he manages to make street lights and parking tickets sound romantic, while also dropping poetic lines like “my blood is wicked and my heart is wild, but I come to you every time like a child.”
Where other artists may have buried such personal declarations, Ciaran Lavery’s lyrics are front and center. He lets his voice and the accompanying instrumentals follow in the path cut by his lyrics, which as a whole seem to be saying, “here I am, the way I am.”
On the track Two Days in Savannah, Lavery laments: “If I pull my heart out would you tell me that it’s good enough?”
Lavery did indeed pull his heart out, baring it to all those who listen to Sweet Decay. The result may be his best, most soul-searching work yet.
Favorite Tracks:
- To Chicago
- Everything is Made to Last
- 13
- Sweet Decay
