The much-ballyhooed death of irony after Sept. 11 has been declared null and void. Turns out, irony was merely on hiatus. Most of us secretly were happy to see it return. It was just so much more enjoyable to live in a world where "subliminable" was allowed to be funny.
But for those of you who appreciated the sudden sobriety of your favorite rock star and regret his backslide into the usual rock star schtick, there's good news: Luka Bloom has released "Between the Mountain and the Moon." Irony never had a foothold within several square miles of this guy.
Luka Bloom, an Irish singer/songwriter who took his name from combining a Suzanne Vega song with the name of James Joyce's famous protagonist, still writes haunting, acoustic pastorals and even marches with his guitar in the occasional demonstration. In America, meanwhile, the folk tradition has slipped below the national consciousness, emerging only infrequently and even then, too often prefixed with "urban."
Bloom's "Between the Mountain and the Moon" is a collection of evocative folk songs that recall a time when singers were expected to be poets with a message. His songs are all wholly earnest, to the point of being almost painfully so for a listener raised on rock songs delivered with that perpetual wink.
But Bloom, despite his anachronism, still stretches the definition of folk, often with surprising results. Nowhere else will you find a song so traditionally structured as "As I Waved Goodbye" that it sounds both ancient and immediate, yet treats the subjugation of Tibet in its lyrics. "I'm a Bogman" is a proclamation of love for Ireland, yet it explodes with flamenco-flavored trumpets.
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The opening track, "Monsoon," simply is gorgeous, with jangling guitars and subtly swelling strings serving as the backdrop for Bloom's hypnotic, slow rap: "Every day is the rainy season / Every night is a full moon / Whenever I'm with you, darling / Love is a monsoon."
"Monsoon" is a perfect album opener, presaging the slew of sensitive, sometimes hopeful, sometimes resigned love songs to follow.
"Here and Now," the follow-up to "Monsoon," arrives and departs as stealthily as its title suggests. But "Here and Now" is typical of the album in its sometimes clunky lyricism, striving too hard for art: "I don't find the rocky place / That was yesterday's revelation / So much yellow silken hair / Left behind to bathe in."
Bloom does better when he drops lines that merely suggest a scene: "They're playing hornpipes, jigs and reels / Just outside my window." He does best when he sings a simple truth: "I get shaky under blue skies / That's just the way it is, sometimes."
Fellow Irish singer Sin
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