Barry McCormack has released seven critically acclaimed albums since leaving Dublin band Jubilee Allstars and is set to release his eighth, Painting Devils, in September 2024. The Irish Times has called him ‘criminally underrated’, a musician ‘before his time’ and ‘one of Ireland’s best songwriters’.
Barry initially left the Allstars after the release of their second album Lights of the City (2001), which gained them recognition as chroniclers of their hometown’s early boom years. The title track, written by Barry, was described by the The Guardian as ‘probably the first great song explicitly written about the bittersweet effects of urban gentrification’.
His debut solo album We Drank Our Tears (2003), was critically lauded for its songs inspired by the Irish folk tradition. Hot Press called it ‘a melting pot of Brendan Behan, Bob Dylan and Shane MacGowan…McCormack has created an album of contemporary folk songs rooted in a tradition that goes back generations.’
The influence of the Dublin street-singing tradition and his reading of local history are apparent on Barry’s second record, Last Night, as I was Wandering (2006). ‘His city is a purgatorial stripmall facade of Nighttown’, said Hot Press, ‘populated by ghosts who walk: Kelly, Kavanagh, Behan, Dylan, MacGowan, the brothers Palace and Louvin and James Clarence Mangan.’ The record was included in Tony Clayton-Lea’s book ‘101 Irish Records You Must Hear Before You Die’.
His third record, Night Visiting (2008), was something of a departure in that the songs took on a rural feel in both setting and story. Inspired by local history, short stories and murder ballads, the Irish Independent called it, ‘Patrick McCabe put to music. And, just as in McCabe’s novels the macabre and hilarious often sit side by side’.
Small Mercies (2011) returned to the themes of Lights of the City, except the boomtown had by then gone bust. It was the record that began his fruitful collaboration with producer Stephen Shannon. The Irish Times’ Brian Boyd called it ‘a wondrous affair…writing of a post-boom Dublin landscape that you only thought Phil Chevron capable of…a triumph’
His fifth album Cut Throat Lane was released in 2013 and garnered some great reviews. Tony Clayton-Lea gave it four stars in The Irish Times and remarked ‘there is surely not a better narrative lyricist in Ireland…brilliant’.
Barry’s sixth release The Tilt of the Earth came out in 2016 and Between the Bars blog said of it, ‘By the time we reach the closing track…there is a sense we have listened to something truly special. With ‘The Tilt of the Earth’ Barry McCormack has created one of the finest Irish albums of the last decade’.
His seventh album, the Mean Time (2019) was called ‘marvelously dark and funny/deadly serious’ by RTE.ie and ‘one of 2019’s best’ by The Irish Times. With its pre-pandemic songs describing a mysterious superflu and global societal breakdown it was called ‘scarily prescient‘ by journalists online.