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Black Limousine

by Louis Brennan

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about

After a short illness my Dad, Louis Snr. died quite suddenly on Thursday 19th of August. He was cremated on Tuesday 24th August after a mass said by his lifelong friend Fr. Ciary Quirke.

On Saturday August 28th my lifelong friend whom I’ve known since I was 4 years old finally married the love of his life in the south of Spain after jumping through no end of hoops, hurdles and false starts. I sang the same song for both ceremonies.

When I returned to London everything was familiar but entirely changed by what had happened. The previous weeks were a blur. There’s a whole canon of music and songs whose universalism gives voice to the indescribable grief the loss of a loved one brings about but what did these songs I’d sung say about my Dad?

Certainly, death and grief are not unique, nor is love. Is the universal self-contained or is it cumulative? I went for a walk to clear my head and when I came back I wrote ‘Black Limousine’ in one sitting, something I’ve very rarely if ever done before. It didn’t say anything new, but it gave me a sense of ownership over what others had said before.

That Saturday I sang ‘Black Limousine’ for the first time at the show in Bath I’d been rehearsing for with Ned the night my Dad died. Although not a man of faith myself, I was reminded of words from one of the oldest song books of them all “To everything there is a season”

Although downloads of this track are free, I would ask you to consider making a donation to Mind, a fantastic charity that do incredible work filling the gaps in our woeful public mental health provision. www.mind.org.uk

lyrics

Well the air tastes different
An imperceptible change
The molecular structure
Somehow rearranged
Now the vessel that carried you
Is all that remains
Just the meat and the bones
We’ll commit to the flames

In the back of a black limousine
I see strangers in the street
Make the sign of the cross
How a nation of pagans
Remembers it’s lost

And I hope that you left
Not a shred of regret
No circumlocution
The words that were needed, you said
And so, they remain
Singing ‘Be Not Afraid’
For the seasons have changed

You were wed, you were widowed
When you were my age
One brother deceased
Another called insane
But you never talked about
Any lingering pain
If the past was a nightmare
You were staying awake

At the back of that old granite church
I cling to the words
Written down on the page
Oh Glory, Hallelujah
You’re flying away

And those hollow clichés
Death dictates we must say
They could not hold a candle
To the slipstream
You left in your wake
I think my heart is gonna break
Singing Glory, Hallelujah
You’re flying away
Oh Glory, Hallelujah
You’re flying away

credits

released January 28, 2021

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Louis Brennan London, UK

London-based Dubliner Louis Brennan is a singer-songwriter in the folk tradition. His folk however aren’t the field hands and travelling minstrels of yore but the repressed middle managers and ennui-ridden urbanites of late-stage capitalism. They populate tales of bad sex, drunk commutes and interpersonal claustrophobia delivered in Brennan’s cracked baritone, at times embarrassingly intimate ... more

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