ciaran lavery | can i begin again? | review

Ciaran Lavery has no interest in playing the wounded wordsmith. He's never longed to be the troubadour. For a while, he's been thinking of ditching his guitar completely. On this, his brand new single, Lavery asks for redemption on a hip hop groove, a different shade of his trademark dark.

It bites hard, hypnotic and entrancing. Lavery's river rarely runs straight, but 'Can I Begin Again?' meanders across genres, the influence of Blue American's beat-maker and former More Than Conquerors frontman Kris Platt apparent. It's a welcome and fascinating development from the man who smashed the Spotify algorithms on 'Shame', streamed at the time of writing over 50 million times. Dancing around a dark, brooding guitar riff, 'Can I Begin Again?' sounds more like Billie Eilish's chart topping 'When We All Fall Asleep, Where Do We Go?', than his last record 'Sweet Decay'. This is sparse and dangerous pop music.

Perhaps we shouldn't be too surprised. After all, Lavery's 'Sea Legs' project with elctronic-artist and fellow NI Music Prize winner Ryan Vail hinted at something deeper beneath the surface. Here is an artist willing to not just push sonic boundaries, but rearrange them completely.

"I need to please myself, I need to please myself'

He certainly does.

Taylor Johnson