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For Those I Love: Carving the Stone review – bracing anger at Irish social stasis

(September Recordings)The raw grief of David Balfe’s first album may have faded to a bruise, but his spoken-word fury is as strong as ever in these hyper-focused stories of poverty and exploitationOn his 2021 debut as For Those I Love, David Balfe closed the gap between performance poetry, moody 1980s synthpop and sample-stuffed electronica to craft an evocative eulogy for his friend Paul Curran, who died by suicide in 2018. The result was Kae Tempest meets New Order via the densely referential lyrics of Real Lies; a set of songs steeped in lump-in-the-throat nostalgia for more innocent times, and in the muted echoes of dancefloor euphoria.On this follow-up, the Dublin musician – now in his early 30s – adjusts his subject while clinging tightly to his fury and devastation. Aside from The Ox/The Afters, a tribute to a former hardman who dies from drink, there’s not much literal grief on Carving the Stone – but Balfe is still in mourning. His psychic wound is more abstract now, a slow...


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