London-based folk-troubadour, Rob Corcoran, 34, does two things extremely well: searching for heart-wrenching truth and delivering a memorable line with clarity.
Singing in his own authentic Dublin accent, the five melancholy tales Corcoran bequeaths to us on this EP — seemingly brought on by his penchant for hard boozing, womansing, and a self-destructive streak contained within his dark poetic soul — may have left many bridges burned and broken hearts along the road. But the listener clearly gains from other people’s losses.
This is b******t-free music where art and life beautifully keep exchanging places.
Corcoran is unequivocally aware that he’s playing with fire by pushing life to its limits: “all for the sake of a song.”
This “black hearted man” seems to have an endless longing to move on to the next adventure, where a new horizon constantly beckons.
Still, there is incredible tenderness, and a sense of redemption, lurking within this existentialist vision that Corcoran constantly wrestles with, but never quite fully understands.
In Train Songs, which is clearly an ode to Woody Guthrie, Corcoran joyfully sings: “If there’s a light/ Let it shine/ Let it heal/ Undermine.”
Corcoran is a singer who understands that history, and respect for the past, is an enormous honour that any folk singer worth their salt must never lose sight of. tyle it deserves, never falters.
The Heart, The Head and Long Since Dead is a stunning debut EP from a musician who finds a kind of mystical solace, and even strange comfort, in the inevitability of human failure that haunts all of us.
