2020’s Distance Is The Soul Of Beauty, an album of grace and generosity, came out of that year’s plague spring reflecting the curious clarity those days allowed, and the reserves of humanity they called forth. For Michael J Sheehy it was a period of renewed creativity after a fallow spell coinciding with a retreat from addiction towards domesticity. This fresh collection Don’t We Deserve Some Kind Of Love? casts an eye back to the more addled disconnected days, drawing lessons from experience. “I’m trying to offer hope, humour and hard-won wisdom” he suggests of this philosophy of step-by-step life management.

There’s a discernable, if unobtrusive, arc to the sequence with the opening two songs hurling him back into the dark times. ‘Like Blood on Snow’ makes for an ominous beginning, with its short lines like razor slashes offering stark recollections of a cocaine binge and its bloody conclusion. Then brighter yet darker ‘Full Moon, Empty Belly’ presents the arrival of some rough beast as “the monster rides again”, all to a country measure featuring the guitar of Pat McCarthy, drums of Ian Burns, and voice of Sandy Mill. This trio, together with violinist Fiona Brice, constitute the Hired Mourners whose telling contributions scatter across the record.

Though they’re not immediately required for ‘Don’t Put Yourself Beyond The Reach Of Love’; here, to a piano accompaniment, is an imprecation to engage with life and not to anaesthetise or retreat. With a gravity akin to Leonard Cohen’s it’s both impossible to ignore or understate. ‘You Better Take Everything’ is brings reflection and reckoning with acoustic guitar organ, and then violin; a curse on a putative assailant – if you come for this Pandora’s box you leave nothing behind!

The following cluster of songs; ‘Pure Deep Water’, ‘Only Drinking In My Dreams’, and ‘If I Had Known It Was The Last Time’; are smartly multi-faceted, indicative of a renewed flexing of the imagination. The latter is a beautiful performance haunted by the later Elvis, instrumentally rich, replete with choruses and coda “Don’t worry sweetheart /Things aren’t as awful as they seem / And its alright, Ma / I’m only drinking in my dreams” ‘If I Had Known It Was The Last Time’ presents as the aftermath of a relationship but carries suggestion of a conversation with his own demons.

With haunting electronica and stately strings ‘The Left Hand Don’t Need To Know’ speaks to the righteous instinct: “Wait for grace / To carve out a space /And the eternal will find / Its rightful place”. The title track – and heart of the record – is a roll-call of the lost, with secular prayer and blessing offered, and a wish that all be drawn in. It’s a twin pole to ‘Don’t Put Yourself Beyond The Reach Of Love’ with a like strength of attraction, and arriving with Sandy Mill’s voice at the repeated litany “the least of the least among us deserve some kind of love” it marks a triumph of serenity and compassion.

All that remains is for the final benediction of ‘Tiny Blessings’; as though conjured from a musical box or medium’s trumpet it’s a quiet universe away from ‘Like Blood On Snow’s ‘sublime malediction’.

Don’t We Deserve Some Kind Of Love? is available now through Dimple Discs.