By Barry G
Barry Grehan, performing as Barry G, is an Irish folk singer who was, for a time, a regular on the Wānaka and Queenstown music scenes.
How to Darn a Salmon came out of Barry’s practice of writing short poems for 15 minutes at the start of each day, which he kept up for 18 months. Many of the resultant works became songs, but he decided to record some of the others as poems, or spoken word pieces, accompanied by backing tracks.
They’re snippets of relationships, characters, worlds. Some are fully formed, like ‘The Ex-’, in which he gently lets down ambition instead of a lover (“what we had before wasn’t for me, I just wanted to be seen with you”), others feel like snippets. ‘The Pirate With the Perfect Arse’ is a 23-second description of just that (“curvaceous, scurvaceous, perfection”). And some are character sketches. The ‘11-Year Old Man’ is a fast-growing lad with “a big Mount Rushmore head on him, Amazonian arms, shoulders that could carry a conversation”. I feel like we all knew a kid like that, and maybe we weren’t nice about it. But this feels admiring, ode to “the pace of his growing.”
Clever, sad, sweet and funny, How to Darn a Salmon is like a book of short stories. And goodness, Barry’s speaking voice is lovely. Golden syrup with an Irish accent.
LAURA WILLIAMSON
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