Dean: For Those I Love’s righteous anger cannot be faked

It glitches into life, materialising in the room like crew members boarding the starship Enterprise. A laptop concerto with real clink and fizz – dragged and dropped, cut and paste, into a glittering electronic wonderland. Layered over the digital production is a voice of authenticity, something that cannot be replicated or faked. This is Dublin over everything, choose your favourite Irish balladeer truism. Prose once penned in Aisling copybooks now fill notes apps. When considering For Those I Love, it can be a challenge to avoid simply quoting lyrics with ceremony and awe.

For anyone who requires a recap, For Those I Love is the nom de plume of one man: David Balfe. The Coolock and Donaghmede spoken-word artist emerged from the city mist six years ago when, deeply mourning the loss of his best friend, Paul Curren, he released a self-titled portrait of pain, nostalgia, and love over self-produced electronic beats and with a deep local emphasis. Though dropped independently in 2019 – The Dublin Inquirer was an early champion of For Those I Love – it wasn’t until the album was re-released on September Recordings that it received a rush of acclaim, winning the Choice Music Prize in 2021. (The project’s eligibility for the award, for reasons I will never understand, was never thoroughly questioned – it had, after all, been available for selection the previous year.)

And so from his grief, much warmth and reverence was reflected back on the creator. Yet a follow-up album was never assured. How does one simply write another batch of songs when the driving impulse had been a pain so great, so specific?

Balfe quickly dismissed the idea of simply recording For Those I Love Part Two – the process of making the original had taken too much from him. But if not writing about Paul, his north star, what else was there to express? “There was a time I did feel like I didn’t have anything to say as I have no interest in populating space for the sake of it,” Balfe has said. “Then one day it all just started to come out.”

And so, the creative levee broke. Barricaded in his home studio, Balfe’s imagination ran amuck. Loose ideas for lyrics he’d previously scrawled on his phone became the bedrock of songs; musical motifs began to convey feelings. An album he has titled Carving the Stone took shape. Unsheathe the hammer and chisel at your peril.

Carving the Stone is a gritty, gripping piece of work forged in fury and frustration because Balfe, like many of us, has detected a darkening in the Dublin atmosphere. The Nazi legions crawling social media appear to be a target of his ire. On the stunning, ferocious “Mirror”, he calls out the “reprobate, ethnostate, modern nationalist cunts” (Balfe repeats that last word a dozen times, just to make sure it resonates) who infect our streets. “These bitter fuckers will tell a man that to hate is to love,” he declares. “And hang them out to dry as soon as they’re done.” Balfe has these zealots pegged.

There are references to technofeudalism, the idea that we serfs obey our big tech overlords who own the digital “land” (Balfe has revealed he’s read Technofeudalism: What Killed Capitalism by Yanis Varoufakis several times), and general rebukes of those of us who scroll too much. For the most part, though, Balfe’s anger stems from being part of a generation of Irish thirty-somethings who can’t build stable lives due to crises in housing and the cost of living: “What was the price of a night is now the price of a pint,” he cries on “Of the Sorrows”.

What’s the sum of all this capitalist crush and policy mire? On “This is Not the Place I Belong”, Balfe envisions the immigrant ship as being his destiny, as it has been for so many forefathers and friends (“It’s a cruel goodbye past the passport line as they smile and say come back soon.”) Walking among the tombstones of the city he loves, he ponders how its concrete and soil has come to define him. The language is frequently dazzling, the performance righteous. Some of the slang will be alien to outsiders, but you don’t need a babel fish to decipher the emotions as being savage. The occasional infusion of trad music samples into the thumping electro beats offers an ironic twisting of romantic Irish myth. When the sound of a fiddle drops on “Of the Sorrows”, it’s with all the satisfaction of that scene in the movie Sinners (if you know you know).

Also striking is “The Ox/The Afters”, a novelistic, narrative piece that tells the tale of a boxer and dockworker from “down the block” with an “Alex Higgins sway” who sinks from drink. Balfe’s storytelling recalls the rhythm and mood of great city texts such as Howie the Rookie, and adds an interesting detour from the album’s more to-the-point message tunes.

Complimenting the new domains Balfe has brought to his writing are beats that represent a significant step forward from For Those I Love. While that album had a charming sense of homemade MP3-era frugality, Carving the Stone leans harder into techno, dubstep, and dance rock. The inventive “No Scheme” is a panicky haze of sweaty 1990s rave music with some programmed hi-hats that nod to hip-hop producer Timbaland. “Mirror” boasts hyperactive arcade sounds on top of sinister synths and a pounding kick drum, while “No Quiet” has a sludgy guitar turned way up in the mix.

Matching the instrumentals is Balfe’s intense, accented vocal performance. The rhythmic levels he reaches on, for example, the pummelling crescendo of “No Scheme”, place him in a great lineage of steely, sonorous dance music vocalists who can perform the kind of spoken word that will set off a festival crowd.

As much as Carving the Stone slaps, I’ve found myself wanting to listen to it through headphones. The messages are so dense, the wordplay so bold, its protests require close inspection. And while it paints a doomed portrait of Dublin, Balfe’s agitations are ultimately uplifting. I’m buoyed that there is a clear and virtuous voice on the side of good against the ghouls, and doubly determined to see them flame right out of history like a stunt motorcyclist that careens straight into the fire.