Jinx Lennon – Trauma Themes Idiot Times

One of Ireland’s less grumpy musical poets Mumblin’ Deaf Ro once talked about disrupting the small set of perspectives that music deals in, by writing from new perspectives. The idea was that breaking up the cosy relationship between the self-regarding “I” and the imaginary female “you” would help little-respected song lyrics move forward, and be a little more like literature. On his fourth album, Jinx Lennon goes a way towards fulfilling that mission. Over beats that are sometimes surprisingly catchy, he writes songs about the Other side of modern life – not so much angry complaints, which are plentiful and pouring out of everyone from Green Day to Lily Allen, but “awkward and real” criticisms. Rather than shouting nihilistically, Lennon seems to simply shine a light on things-as-they-are and say “see for yourself”. It works.

Some of the “trauma themes”: The fact that a football team is not a satisfactory replacement for actually living a worthwhile life, in ‘The Men Who Saved The Face of Football’. A study of the “don’t get involved” phenomenon of the unconcerned modern world in the particularly Fall-like ‘Taxi Man Face’. Sticking a knife in the eye of a house invader in ‘Protect Thyself And Thy Home’. Anything is potential subject matter.

It’s also a little refreshing just to hear the voice of the towns – a guy who speaks in a fairly thick Louth accent and makes no apology for it. There is no secondarity about it, no effort to squeeze through some sort of US/UK/urbane mould. Who else would bother with ‘Folk Music For The Midlands’, as Lennon does on the tenth track of this album? Where else are you going to hear about places like Oriel Park, Dowdallshill, Delvin Co. Westmeath or the De La Salle school from Ravensdale Forest? Or “mormons on bikes and in pairs” or even “some bollocks from Jonesboro I did an electronics course with”?

I suppose part of Jinx Lennon’s project is to make poetry out of those places and those people. There’s nothing that says they’re not worthy, and Lennon follows in a proud line of Irish poets and writers from Patrick Kavanagh through to John McGahern and Patrick McCabe by writing about them. That’s the way to get to “modern Ireland”, you see. You can’t just work in generalisations. You have to dig a little, notice things outside Dublin 2. Jinx Lennon, as much as anyone else, is writing the story of this country. Romantic Ireland is long gone and all but forgotten. What’s there now is a “tape recorder/answering machine/type voice”, a blankness with “rusted Pope’s medals” and memories of Italia 90 keeping people linked to a time long ago, but little else to permeate the bullshit of housing estates and “selfish stupid automatons”.

It’s not just a gloomy State of the Nation address though. It’s also incredibly funny, in a very dark way. And its songs, some of which come complete with potentially shout-along choruses, are eminently listenable. Which is convenient, because it’s almost important that people listen to this record, so that they can have the proverbial “one good look at themselves” in Jinx’s nicely polished looking glass.