Goodbye To The Madhouse

McDermott's 2 Hours

A new McDermott's album is a rare thing, one that matches their first album, The Enemy Within, is something to be savoured. Goodbye To The Madhouse features the inspired songwriting of the acerbically witty Nick Burbridge reunited with the original members of the group. The album also involves several Levellers, and marks the first non-Levellers release on their On The Fiddle Recordings label.

The Importance of McDermott's in the late eighties folk-punk and edgier folk-rock explosion cannot be over emphasised, they had a seismic effect on the whole scene. The Levellers cite them as a major influence to this day, their cover of Dirty Davy being one of their most popular live tracks.

Burbridge has a breathtaking honesty and bravery in his writing, a poet of no mean talent, he gets under your skin with songs that talk of the dispossessed, those left on the margins of society and the injustices of the world. 'Not another protest singer' I hear you groan, but you'd be so wrong in that assumption, Burbridge creates mesmerising stories and characters that could have jumped from the page of a James Joyce novel, he sings them in a beautiful irish inflected voice that avoids any danger of slipping into pathos.

Musically the album is every bit as strong as you would expect from a band that created the definitive folk-rock album with The Enemy Within. Fiddler Ben Paley, Matt Goorney on guitars along with Burbridge were the core of the original line-up, here they produce a lively celtic infused rhythm akin to the best of the Waterboys on Fisherman's Blues. They are joined by over a dozen other musicians playing everything from the banjo to the pipes. It's not just trad tunes beefed up with drum and bass, it's a big fat lovely soundscape that evoke extremes, from big open skies to a cosy session in an Irish pub.

The album is a wonderful energetic beast, full of songs that will make you jig and think, McDermott's 2 Hours are back with a vengeance.

Iain Hazlewood