Bap For Good

Bap Kennedy is at the HMV store in Belfast, strumming out songs from his new record, 'The Sailor's Revenge'. As ever, he's singing about shipwrecked hearts and the flotsam of the soul.

The tunes are lonesome, but many of them snatch a few fibres of romance against all the odds. Remember, back in the days of Energy Orchard, Bap would rouse the New Pegasus pub in north London with a tune called 'Pain, Heartbreak And Redemption'. Always the difficulty, but love remains the great consolation prize.

The new record summons up the ghosts of Hank Williams, Dominic Behan and Francis McPeake, Senior. There's a tremendous lyric about Jimmy Sanchez, the Chilean miner, and like Woody Guthrie, Bap is able to combine the personal with the political, and to vent about the cost of capitalism on a poor man's dignity.

The song that works best in the HMV store is 'Shimnavale'. It's about a location beneath the Mourne mountains, but Bap carves a mythic dimension out of that granite pile. It's about the sweetest girl, the old place and the awful wrench of being somewhere else. We're all willing him back to where he once belonged.