O’Connell & Love

★★★★

Will You Be There?

MOUNTMELLICK. CD/DL/LP

Second album from Alabama 3 singer and chum. Brendan O’Connell and Rob ‘Larry Love’ Spragg’s intriguing Minesweeping album of 2015 wasn’t their first collaboration, but it was their first as a duo. Six years later, the formula remains similar.

This time around there are no famous guests, but there’s whistling on Riddles In The Sand, humming on If Love Is All You Got and acoustic plucking to spare. Beyond the nearspoken, hymnal You’re Gonna Need Someone, Love’s vocals are notably less grizzled than his work with Alabama 3. They’re not afraid to keep things simple on I Got A Woman and the bustling Hurry Home, but they’re at their best when they’re more complex, hence the multi-layered balm of When You Were The Moonlight, with its strings and choir, or The Belle Of Clare where the guitar is Latin and the allpervading sense of rue gruffly heartbreaking.