DES DE MOOR - WATER OF EUROPE (IRREGULAR)
Moreover, in common with Roy Orbison and Scott Walker, Des has realised that a mere Great Voice isn't enough. As well as a handful of beautifully judged covers - Brecht, Brel and Terry Callier - there's a lively and imaginative composer and lyricist at work here, with nearly every item standing tall as a song per se if all the confident, and occasionally eccentric, arrangements were stripeed down to just voice and a solitary keyboard - as, actually, they are on 'Sharp Contradictions' and 'Margins'.
Accompaniment by as near as Des ever gets to standard rock instrumentation is reserved for two of this collection's most immediatly memorable pieces: 'Grandmother Was A Hero' and show-stopping 'Joey's Dreams', worth the whole price of the album for its poignant, tear-jerking quality.
Yet neither of these overshadows companion tracks that, while beginning as intellectual rather than aesthetic experiences, eventually reach out and hold you forever.
Alan Clayson
Des has fallen on a sound reserve that is generated not from the throat, but from deeper within, as epitomised on this latest unfurling of a rich, supple baritone which invests 'Water of Europe' with a maturity of emotional gesture belying his thirty-something years.
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