Flowers From The Graveyard by Michael McDermott (Pauper Sky Records, 2026)
Michael McDermott has written about the original inspiration for Flowers From The Graveyard. He was riding his bike one day when he ‘was overcome with the most beautifully sweet floral aroma’. As he looked around, he realised that it was a graveyard he was riding past and that the scent was flowers from the graveyard:
What a thing I thought. What a great reminder. That no matter how bleak things get, no matter how caught up
in our own drama we get. Here was a gift, here was a philosophy, here was a path and a clarity.
This accurately sums up the burden of this album and of much that McDermott has written since finding and maintaining sobriety, along with a stable family life.
Hope is found, as he sings in ‘But For The Little Moments’, in the ‘little moments’ that he looks out for and pays attention to (like the flowers from the graveyard that he smelt whilst out riding his bike). These can be both acts of kindness – ‘A smile, a kind word’ – and acts of liberation – ‘the things that give ourselves some wings / And free us from our own psychosis’. This song essentially encapsulates the conclusion at which he arrived in his biography Scars from another life: ‘Stop looking in the same spots for what is not there. Stop seeking the things you think you need. You must create new narratives in order to break through the wall that you have encased yourself in.’
‘Always A Ways Away’ is another song that draws on these insights:
It’s time to tip over the tables
Rewrite those fairytales…
They’ve been lying to us all along
I’d be willing to admit, that maybe just a bit
Everything that I believed was wrong
These are lessons that have come the hard way; a harrowing journey through drink, drugs, guns, and self-destruction that saw him incarcerated, financially ruined, and spiritually bankrupt. What he retained throughout these experiences was the ability to document his journey and those of others in reflective, insightful poetry combined with heart-stopping melodies whether fashioned as ruminative ballads or foot-stomping rockers.
Drawing on the legacies of literate rock music that stem from the beat poetry of Bob Dylan, the confessional verse of Joni Mitchell, the spiritual koans of Leonard Cohen and the Great American novels of Lou Reed, McDermott has carved out his own place in the pantheon of those who wield words in ways that open up insight whilst also welding those words to tunes that become ear worms. In that pantheon, it is probably Bruce Springsteen with whom he shares most characteristics, while more than holding his own in the comparison.
His story songs are where the travails and traumas he has traversed now find consummate expression. ‘Johnny Sparrow and the Sunset Girl’ tells the story of ‘An Irish kid from the Bronx / Who came from a long line of drunks.’ Sparrow’s world is turned upside down by Sunny but not to the extent that he can fully leave his old way of life behind. The denouement is tragic. Through his own experience, McDermott can inhabit the shoes of the Johnny Sparrow’s of this world, whether describing the war going on in their heads, as he does in ‘Old Feeling’, or the acceptance of what is good enough that he articulates in the ramped-up opening rocker ‘The Best We Get’.
The language McDermott finds to describe and confess in such tales is consistently apposite, engaging and thought-provoking:
Most times my mind’s a mess
Out here among the dispossessed
It feels I’m playing checkers
While the world is playing chess
(‘Nobody’)
He has also managed to write some of the greatest protest songs of recent years. In 2020, he pointed ‘an accusing finger at the inhumanities perpetrated by the Trump regime via a tumbling flood of memorable lyrical images’ as he asked ‘What in the world… / is happening here?’:
New low, Jim Crow
Plead the 5th, you don’t know
It’s not too hard to see
That the President’s a criminal
Iron Eyes Cody,
wipe away your tear
What in the world…
is happening here?
(‘What in the world…’)
In 2026, he has returned with an updated accurate and apposite report from the mean streets of America (demoed originally for No Kings Day, a peaceful mass protest against the second Trump administration):
There’s something happening here
It seems like everything has gotten pretty weird
Tech Bros. Unwell people selling pillows
Hijacking Jesus for treasonous criminals
Freedom of Speech is no longer what it means
AI will eulogize the American Dream
Moses said “I got it all right here in writing
They sow division to keep everybody fighting.”
We’re turning into a dystopian autocracy
Because the future sure ain’t what it used to be
(‘The Future’)
While railing at the way the odds are always stacked against those that are dispossessed, he also recognises that:
Hope hides in the hidden places
Where we’ve all been scarred
(‘The Struggle Makes You Stronger’)
As a result, through all his weakness, there is one thing that he has come to know, which is that ‘The struggle makes you stronger’.
This anthemic realisation sets up the final songs that bring this journey through trials and tribulations to its hopeful conclusion. In the midst of our traumas, each of us needs those who will commit to bringing those acts of kindness that are the little moments which make a big difference:
When everything just seems to turn out wrong
When you’re looking around and you don ’t feel you belong
When it feels like there’s something missing in your heart
I’ll bring you flowers from the graveyard
(‘Flowers From The Graveyard’)
As a result, we can see beauty in life’s pain:
For there’s grief and pain, blue skies and rain
Just to be here is a miracle
And there’s love everywhere
So sing it like a prayer
Ain’t life beautiful, ain’t life beautiful
Life is beautiful
(‘Ain’t Life Beautiful’)
This final song ends with the honesty that characterises all of McDermott’s writing:
Life is beautiful
I know it’s been said
Will you remind me on those days when I forget
This, however, is not solely the plea of the character singing this song but is also the effect that this profound and profoundly moving album has for its listeners. Give it the attention that is its due and every song on their carefully crafted masterpiece will offer up little moments that ‘turn things around’.
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Jonathan Evens
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