The Weight of the Woods
Artist: Dermot Kennedy
Label: Island
There’s an expectation that artists will demonstrate meaningful creative growth from album to album. Dermot Kennedy has arguably stretched that idea to the limits by making an entire record about his love of trees, as he has done with The Weight of the Woods, his creakingly portentous third LP.
The concept is spelt out with the cover image of the Dublin singer frowning against an ominous tree line. He has said that one of the project’s inspirations is the forest behind his house, on the Dublin–Kildare border. Inevitably, there is a song called Sycamore.
The lyrics on the title track unspool like a David Attenborough fever dream (“tethered by bones tight / in view of that coastline”). If you’re not in the mood for a headlong plunge into deeply serious man woe, it won’t be long before you’ll have had your fill of all the chlorophyll.
So he’s getting twiggy with it on an album that could have been titled Fir Those I Love.
You’ve got to wonder whether Kennedy will come to regret the decision to go public with his passion for all things moss‑lined and decidedly deciduous. It is, after all, far too easy to joke that he has always been a bit of a wooden songwriter. Again and again across the past decade his husky, grainy voice and obvious talent for melody and arrangement have been poured into rigid power ballads that come off like Ed Sheeran minus the fun pop bits.
Those flaws are blown up to supersize across the initial stretches of the album. Here we find Kennedy torn unsatisfyingly between the urge to give his audience repeat servings of the doe-eyed ditties that have made him a success and his desire to try something more experimental. (There are occasional hints of Bon Iver and Sigur Rós.)
Often he tries to have it both ways, as on the listlessly solemn Refuge and Funeral. These will no doubt please the many thousands who will attend two sold‑out nights at the Aviva Stadium in July. But they also suggest an artist motivated largely by the desire to make new hits that sound like the old ones and unwilling to take any meaningful risks.
The Weight of the Woods relies heavily on Kennedy’s voice, which has the unfortunate habit of lapsing into Mumford & Sons‑style faux sincerity. The harder he tries the more performatively earnest he sounds.
This is unfortunate, as he clearly means what he is singing about – mostly close encounters with heartache narrated from that weird two‑person perspective, as if he’s crooning presumptuously on behalf of both himself and his love interest.
That said, the record is not quite a straight-up dud. It improves immeasurably from the mid‑section onwards. There’s a satisfying moment of understatement on the moving piano ballad Endless. That high point is followed by a spirited and moreish attempt at sounding like mid‑tempo Jeff Buckley on the wonderful Turnstile.
It’s an excellent song that speaks to the missed opportunity that much of The Weight of the Woods represents. If only he had gone further in this direction: indie rock with a pep in its step. Instead he too often plays it safe with a landslide of Noah Kahan‑style dude dirges. (It’s no surprise that the album is produced by the regular Kahan collaborator Gabe Simon.)
Kennedy is a darling of Irish radio. Turn the dial all you want: he’s always there, as inevitable as drizzle or traffic. In that regard it’s telling that he has been championed loudly and proudly by the industry here, whereas more innovative artists, such as CMAT, have had to look abroad for airplay.
This is obviously not Kennedy’s fault. It speaks more than anything to the lack of imagination of the corporate Irish music business and its love of a sure thing, especially when that sure thing is a guy with a guitar.
Having embarked on a brief excursion into indie pop, Kennedy is soon back to his shrub‑will‑tear‑us‑apart vibe as the record closes with the title track, where he tries to remember who he is by lying on the ground and staring at the sky.
It’s a glum conclusion to an album that, for all its love of the natural world, ultimately has all the subtlety, nuance and grace of a chainsaw running amok.