Former Cousteau vocalist LIAM McKAHEY is blessed with one of those voices that makes a mockery of genres. Often compared with the likes of Scott Walker or the Tindersticks' Stuart Staples, it's true he has a similarly dark and smouldering baritone and fronts a band with expansive, filmic tendencies, but he's very much his own man as this first, post-Cousteau album makes very clear indeed.
Hailing from Cork, but a long-term London resident, McKahey recently re-located to Canberra, Australia, so whether The Bodies are more than simply the group he formed to record before he left London remains open to question. What is for sure is that he hired some suitably dramatic, like-minded souls for this job, as they fit around these brooding, windswept songs like a velvet glove around an iron fist.
The opening title track throws something of a curve, though. It's a suitably slow and stately song of wandering and redemption, with blasts of pedal steel wafting by like distant freight trains, though McKahey's voice sounds a good octave higher than usual. Once you've got over this shock, the song itself settles in your mind and its' urgent lyrics (“open up your eyes, it's passing you by”) can't fail to impinge.
Elsewhere, The Bodies are occasonally gripped by a hunger to rock that rarely afflicted Cousteau. 'Fire' cranks up the guitars to 11, although naturally the spotlight still falls on McKahey's shockingly charismatic vocal. 'Unheeded Tidings', though, walks a razor's edge of suspense with a Romanian gypsy violin tussling with the band's Bad Seeds-ian creep and a positively macabre vocal from McKahey hinting at murder, loss, attempted suicide (“I was left there with nothing but my gun, but I didn't have the courage to do it”) and Beelzebub knows what else. It inspires the band to some extreme acts of punky ultra-violence before it finally blows itself out in an electric storm which soundbites like 'dramatic' fall some way short of describing.
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Naturally, there are also a clutch of the expected debenair, smartly-tailored ballads and they're among McKahey's best yet. 'Serafina' and 'Clyde' are gorgeous, lovelorn affairs where pain and bliss straddle beautifully-attired tunes with Love-esque mariachi horns tacked on for good measure. 'John Henry's Eve' is superbly poised with a magnificent French horn part picking out the melody and 'Blackwater Pass' – featuring a shadowy vocal duet with Renee-Louise Carafice – could well be McKahey's very own 'Where The Wild Roses Grow'. It's a divinely dark, cinematic outing full of beauty, dread and rolling timpanis.
By the time he's come close to pulling off a Bond theme with 'Lovers & Fools', it's obvious Liam McKahey has all his suave'n'stylish bases covered. 'Lonely Road”s title may suggest a veering off the beaten track, but while there's murder, mystery and suspense in these songs, he's still very much walking the sophisticated, croonsome path we know and love him for. Let's hope moving to sunnier climes won't blunt his passion for the dark and deadly side of life.
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