Dan McCafferty

Last Testament

earMusIc First solo album in more than 30 years from former Nazareth vocalist.

In 2013 Dan McCafferty called time on his distinguished career as the singer with Nazareth for health reasons. This return is a determinedly soulful, stately and considered reconfiguring of his bruised but still mighty talent.

Czech accordion and keyboard playing co-writer Karel Marik provides alternatively rootsy and sombrely anthemic settings for McCafferty’s lyrics, in which the serious matters of long relationships rent asunder (Why, Looking Back) and reconciled (Sunshine) are measured out with aged experience, poise and gravity. Illness has not diminished McCafferty’s unmistakable voice, and here it’s given space to breathe and wears its scars and ravages with pride. Magisterially blitzed, piano-lead beauty Refugee and its imposing and dramatic counterpart, the mighty Mafia, provide the depth, and Right To Fail even adds a Brechtian flourish.

Painstaking and thoughtful throughout, Last Testament is a surprise that actually lives up to its title; a fierce, cold-eyed survey of life’s triumphs and regrets, searingly honest, naturally dramatic. ■■■■■■■■■■