John Francis Flynn - I Would Not Live Always review | Jude Rogers's folk album of the month

The Guardian 0

(Rough Trade/River Lea)
Treasures – including a memorable take on Come My Little Son – abound on the Irish musician’s incredibly moving album of folk songs

Human experience burns ferociously on this extraordinary debut from the uncompromising Irish artist John Francis Flynn, stalwart of Dublin traditional group Skipper’s Alley. He has a voice like old leather, blunt yet sincere, holding his notes like bagpipe drones, resisting all weathers. Around it whirl traditional instruments and Tascam four-track cassette-tape loops, masterminded by composer Ross Chaney, giving the album an unearthly intensity.

Flynn begins with Roud ballad Lovely Joan, about a woman who tricks a lustful man for his horse: he sings it like a distant yet intriguing observer, an old man resting a hand on his fence-post. Phil Christie’s keyboard introduction enhances the strange, spellbinding mood, recalling Beverly Glenn-Copeland’s compositions and the late Dolly Collins’s organ arrangements (Flynn writes in the liner notes that Collins’s “radical yet rooted” work with sister Shirley hugely influenced him).