MEZANMI
Always Upwards
(Always Upwards)
Fran O’Hanlon (recording as Mezanmi) previously released stand out song Like Spun Gold as a single, excoriating the lies told by those who seek to dismantle the health service he works for as a palliative care doctor, true anger expressed in disconsolate beauty, a feeling also expressed in his pared down single To You, My Friends as a tribute to his colleagues: “In truth, it wouldn’t last a day without you”. The album is mainly electronic, but always imbued with a warmth and human spirit through his collaborations. Always Upwards (engineered by Guy Massey) tells socially aware stories, the opening song Steal Me Away being about refugees risking their lives to cross the sea and Channel, accompanied by ethereal singer Sandrayati.Again Again glitches as it channels Radiohead’s Everything in It’s Right Place and confronts his male complicity in the death of Sarah Everard: “And so I continue to sit behind my comfortable words and wait..”. Beautiful Town (with Kieran Brunt of Shard) pulsates with the light it brings, “a choreographed chaos of light”, while noting what is behind the places “where squalor and beauty collide”. The album’s title track is a cinematic sounding piano led piece, with a poem delivered in spoken word, “There is a backward notion of forward motion as unending progress…” with the true struggle of life being always upwards, represented by a cyclic piano riff and rising structure.
The Numbers is a slow, dark electro track, about the dehumanisation of others. The distance we place between ourselves and all the images of war on the television: “It’s only a body after all, and unknown to me, not anyone I know.. It’s only a baby, after all, don’t look to me it’s not my fault.” There is a similar darkness to the pulse of There’s No Freedom Like Feeling Lost, as he sings of sepulchral darkness, and attempting not to give up even through chaos.
This darkness is balanced by the self-help of I Stood For A Moment, advising moments of mindfulness, and the closing songs which foreground his folk influences. Two Strangers is a duet with Jessie Buckley, a love song about the moment of meeting a major influence on your future. He closes with a hymn to self-worth, against self-doubt and accepting All I am and Am Not backed by harmonium and a string section.
Massey’s production brings a high-gloss effect to what are beautiful, but human led poetry backed with electronics which glitch or shimmer to bring the stories to life. An excellent debut for the artist and his unusual take on politics, which is to maybe tell the truth and act with kindness.
Essential Info
Main image by Alax Kozobolis
