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Luka Bloom.
 "I'm in Ireland, and it's not too shabby now I must say," enthuses Luka Bloom down the line in his engaging brogue. "Spring is here, the daffodils are up, the birds are singing." How can he even contemplate leaving this bucolic idyll? "Ah, I'd only leave to come to Australia, that's the only reason I'd leave," he chuckles.
Once we've dispensed with the pleasantries and discussed Adelaide's less-than-stellar summer ("Ah, but you'd need some rain though. It's a dry little corner of the world. And me, I get irritated when Irish people complain about the rain; we've got the best climate in the world, if you don't mind a little rain and grey") we get on with the reason for our chat: the new album 'Innocence' and his imminent Australian tour. Or we would, except that Bloom has a bit to say about his homeland.
"I was in the US for five years, but I've been home quite a while now - nearly ten years. I'm well settled, I won't be living in America again, that's for sure," he sighs. "It's going to take years for it to recover from this madness."
It certainly seems that Ireland has been a mite more sensible place to be over the past five years or so.
"Sensible? 'Sensible' and 'Ireland' are not two words I've ever heard in the same sentence before," he muses. "Actually, maybe 'sensible' isn't such a bad word to describe it. I think we're very confused: I think we like to think of ourselves as very liberal, very pro-European, very anti-war, very peace-loving, but the reality's somewhat different I think. People don't vocally in any way support the Bush war, but despite the unbelievably protests against it we've still kept the government that supported it. I sort of suspect that deep down most Irish people are quite happy to just take the dollar and keep quiet about things." He chuckles darkly. "Does that sound familiar?"
While Bloom's politics are clearly strong, he's wary about bringing them into his music per se - although he still hardly fits the stereotype of the tortured, personally confessional singer/songwriter.
"Well, I don't really think of my songs as being personal," he explains. "I think my songs are more universal than personal, and I think the personal side of them is only important to me in any way while I'm actually writing them. I'm certainly not a 'political' songwriter in the way that someone like Billy Bragg is, but I believe ultimately in the triumph of the human spirit, and I think it's challenging to be in a world where people are so dogmatic, so arrogant, so self-righteous... It's important for me to believe in the essential simple things that I really believe in. I think people find it so hard to see the brilliance within themselves, and I think ultimately what I'm about is transforming the ordinary: making the ordinary extraordinary, that's what my songwriting's about. I rarely tackle the big issues of the day, I'd rather tap into people's spirit."
Andrew P Street
 | Luka Bloom plays at the Gov on Sat 19 March with Heather Frahn. |
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