Henry O Henry - Apocrypha - VINYL LP

Dublin-born, thirty years an immigrant. That's the spine of henryohenry's debut, Apocrypha, not as a concept but as a condition. InchIreland is the DNA of the thing,Inch he says, Inchthe thing before every other thing.Inch He's spent three decades in the United States working in the trades, absorbing the country's mythologies and building what he calls Inchan idiosyncratic American languageInch out of them, something closer to Whitman's vision than what he found.He is, by his own account, Inchformally and informally not a musician.Inch A childhood nylon-string guitar, a few chords learned, and not much else until 2019, when his brother handed him a $6 charity-shop guitar with a repaired headstock and low strings that distorted unpredictably. All but two of the songs on Apocrypha were written on it. It doesn't appear on the record.The songs came with a kind of finality. InchI wrote them for myself,Inch he says, Inchand was certain every song was the last one.Inch It was filmmaker Rick Alverson, a longtime friend who produced the sessions, who convinced him they could stand together as something. They do.Guitarist Eamon O'Leary (his brother) and Ned Steves (his son) play most of the album, recording together for the first time, without rehearsal. Their instinct is at once precise and open, parts that feel discovered rather than placed, deepening the harmonic language without disturbing the clarity of the songs. Erik Hall mixed and contributed overdubs; Emilie Rex of Lean Year lends luminous harmonies to three songs; poet Callie Garnett appears on another. The arrangements grew in the room, the lyrics and melodies arriving intact, the music unfolding around them.The title does what ohenry likes it's slippery. Apocrypha suggests disputed texts, hidden books, stories that may or may not be true. InchIt suggests I might not be telling the truth,Inch he says, Inchbut also,