Damien Dempsey Almighty Love ReviewThe cover of ‘Almighty Love,’ Damien Dempsey’s sixth studio album, is unremarkable on first glance. The composition of the image is fairly basic, a man rising out of the sea in Dublin bay with the Port smoke-stacks visible in the background. They could have snapped it while Damo was out swimming one day. But this is an album of deceptive first impressions.

A few things stick with you after a first listen through. Dempsey has a unique way of enunciating that slips between his pronounced Dublin accent, a traditional lilt and a sort of riff on Sting’s faux-Jamaican accent. These singing styles are necessary for the strange mish-mash of genres on the album from the hip-hop sounds of Born Without Hate to the straight trad of Fire In The Glen, and while they work for their respective tunes they give the album a bizarre atmosphere overall.

Lyrically the album feels clumsy at times.  Lines like “The love that drove Gandhi? To die for India, free” on the title track betray rhyming problems that run throughout. Reading through the lyrics would not suggest anything particularly original. A lot of the themes covered on the album are very familiar too. Moneyman borrows from Dylan’s Masters of War; Busting Out Of Here has the ‘pick up and take off’ feel of early Springsteen; Canadian Geese is Van Morrison’s trademark nostalgia. Taken literally, the words alone on the album add up to nothing new.

Despite all this, when the album is over there is something that draws you back to it. The three notes on the opening track, played on strings, have a piercing and defiant optimism to them. When Dempsey sings the words “almighty love” over it he sings with such triumphant energy – as if he’s standing atop a mountain – that it feels like a revelation. His voice is so much more than notes and texture – there is a pure emotionality behind it, one that reaches past the obstructively awkward lyrics to the honest feelings that they attempt to communicate.

The songs are simple in construction and are not notable for their distinct melodies, but their simplicity is their strength. When Dempsey tries to be too poetical or too vivid it doesn’t work as well as when he let’s the strength of the music and his own voice carry the track. The verses on Chris And Stevie come across a bit silly (“My buddy Chris was quiet but tough/And to his face you wouldn’t call him a puff”) whereas the driving beats and the simple singing of “I’m missing you today” at the end is so much more effective.

When taken as a whole, rather than looked at as a number of component parts, ‘Almighty Love’ is a document of an honest spiritual journey through the world and the self. Moneyman has the anarchic finger-pointing of early Dylan but he also finds answers in songs like Community which suggests a harmonious world-view where ugly and awful things exist, but they are not to be given the authority to dictate over how we feel.

The album cover then doesn’t seem so unremarkable. The image of Dempsey rising from the suffocating waters with his arms outstretched and his face tilted up towards the sky, a grateful expression upon it, is instead powerful and appropriate.