The Past Is Another Country
The normally reclusive singer-songwriter talks about his remarkable life and times and the harrowing personal journey that led to his new album.
Adrienne Murphy, 27 Sep 2007
Anyone who’s been to hell and back will recognise a fellow-traveller in Paddy Casey. With his third and latest album – the beautiful Addicted To Company (Pt.1) – this Dublin-born cartographer of the human condition carries on charting its lonely, painful places, and its paths to salvation through the heart.
Shot through with characteristic Peter Pan exuberance, Casey’s latest songs show that he’s developing as an artist, achieving a maturity in his soulful songwriting that points to long-term staying power – and indeed success. No stranger to irony, metaphor and symbol, and clearly a well-read and gifted wordsmith, Paddy’s lyrics on Addicted To Company (Pt.1) are typically abundant and colourful, dense with story and meaning. Yet – and here’s the rub – face-to-face, he’s an unusually reserved kind of guy, not at all forthcoming with his answers to the questions that are put to him in interviews.
To be honest, Casey is one of the toughest nuts I’ve been assigned to crack. You need a chisel to prise him open. He’s a ruthless self-editor, and has a tendency, while we’re talking, to drift off into a state bordering on catatonia. Extracting some kind of truthful picture as to the life he has led was like pulling teeth from a hen. I stumbled away from the experience exhausted, worried that when I listened back to the tape, I’d find nothing but terse monosyllabic replies with which to try build a story.
Yet strangely, reading over the transcript of the interview, I was struck by the insight and honesty of Casey’s thought-processes. Here’s someone, part born with but also pushed by circumstances towards an innately enigmatic, eccentric and perhaps troubled take on things, who instead of going off the deep-end, has managed to reach through the pain and confusion to an unusually profound kind of self-knowledge and self-healing. And much to his credit, he knows how to express all that difficult stuff in a zero bullshit, zero fat way – though you have to dig deep to reach it.
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