“Tonight I’m ready for fighting/I’m ready to take one on the chin/ got me a heart that’s fuelled by love and lightning/ for the first time it feels, I am odds on to win”. So sings Michael McDermott on the Tom Petty infused “Never Goin’ Down Again” a track which seems absolutely pivotal here.
I’ve been lucky in my life. I don’t drink and beyond a Rennie and the occasional Paracetamol I’ve never touched drugs. Beyond my support for Stoke City FC and my almost ridiculous love for music, I don’t have any addictions. I am acutely aware that isn’t the case for a lot of people.
This isn’t a website, either, that likes to pry too much into people’s personal lives. That said, when it comes to “Out From Under” there are certain self-evident truth’s that are impossible to ignore.
Michael McDermott had the world at his feet. In his own words: “I was the ‘new Dylan.’ Label deal – easy. MTV, the New York Times, CNN – easy. I thought, ‘This is awesome. This is the life I knew I’d have.”
But the record industry is a fickle mistress: “It all went away just as fast,” he said. “I was like the Elizabeth Taylor of the recording industry, bouncing around to eight different labels. The records came out and didn’t connect. I became disillusioned. It was a fast shot to the top and then a long way down, and it was hard.”
He struggled with drink and drug addiction, as well as depression, before pulling himself together with the help of his wife and daughter for 2016’s wonderful “Willow Springs”. The only downside to a record as good – and successful – as that one is how the hell you follow it up.
The answer – it seems – is that you make one even better. Because make no bones about it, “Out From Under” is sensational.
It is immediately clear that this is the best album of McDermott’s career right from the astonishing opener “Cal-Sag Road”. Storytelling folk music doesn’t get any better than this, it really doesn’t. Especially when it comes with the twist that this one has. Eight-part dramas on Sky Atlantic don’t have a plot this good. Nor do they have this whispered delivery.
It is tempting to imagine that “Gotta Go To Work” which follows, concerns the same character, maybe it does, maybe they’re all the different faces of McDermott, all the different sides of addiction, or as this one so succinctly puts it: “I’ll live like Caligula on Saturday night, and on Sunday be forgiven by the Lord. “
What is absolutely certain – and there can be no conjecture here – is that “Knocked Down” is autobiographical. Over a funky, southern rocker we are taken on the journey through “an old guitar and an Irish hat” and spending “twenty years with a monkey on my back”
If that is the highlight – and to be fair it probably is – then it is amongst 10 others. Such is the strength of this record, you will find a different favourite each time. It could be “Sad Songs”, which has a kind of Blue Collar Jesse Malin feel. Another occasion it could be the wonderful “This World Will Break Your Heart” which weaves the stories of the unfortunate into one whole – although the verse concerning a miscarriage is particularly upsetting.
One of the most interesting things about “Out From Under” is that the title track is a pulsing, electronic thing, but also the way McDermott uses language is incredible. There is talk here of “the curtains of the day” for example, to emphasise that he doesn’t write songs in the same fashion as anyone else.
“Celtic Sea” is a little more contented and finds happiness on the journey, but just when you think this album had no more surprises left along comes “Rubber Band Ring” with its full-on Southside Johnny style swing and Clarence Clemons-esque sax solo.
“Sideways”, which is somewhere between Paul Simon and Bob Dylan (it references the latter) is a fine soul tinged thing, and the fact it ends with “God Help Us” – a track that appears to deal with those who replace addiction with religion – has an inference lost on no one, it’s as if he’s reminding himself here too.
Michael McDermott is – he’d probably agree – one of the lucky ones. He’s got his family and he’s got an astonishing talent, and for that, upon hearing “Out From Under” we can all be grateful, whatever our situations might be.
Rating 9.5/10
