A multi-hyphenate artist – songwriter and theatre performer, to name but two – West Cork’s Molly O’Mahony has left her previous music outlet, art-folk group Mongoose, to forge a solo identity.
Her debut album ably showcases this with a collection of songs that, thanks to painstaking journaling – a constant in her life since she was a teenager – document years of a life fully lived, loved, lost and then, gradually, reclaimed.
After she had spent 10 years in Dublin, the advent of the pandemic prompted O’Mahony to return, insulated and isolated, to her home in Ballydehob, where she set about writing songs that would tell the story of her life through her 20s – an emotional excursion, she says, that took her “from innocence to experience... through all the awkward, lovelorn shape-shifting I’ve undergone... a monument to love, lessons and growth.”
Assisted by siblings Fiachra and Matilda, and produced by Alex Borwick, from the title track onwards The House of David outlines the rise and fall of adventure and exploration and occasional vulnerable fallouts.
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Her Song (“coffee and a scone around the Liberties... I’ll bring my bike and swing round your place... buzz me in”) is a breezy tale of budding and then established romance, while Tomorrow’s Lunch (“boxing off tomorrow’s lunch, I watched you so discreetly…”) is a whistle-friendly (literally) outline of even-tempered homemaking.
These and more showcase O’Mahony’s delicate but no less determined creative mindset. mollyomahony.bandcamp.com
