F.J. McMahon’s exhausted yet intense murmur was not bred in ’60s folk clubs but in Vietnam, where his tour of duty did not inspire him to write songs boiling with rage. Singing as if from a distant dimension surrounded only by discreet drums and dual guitars, McMahon instead recreates the state of mind of a vet bone tired of struggle, but nonetheless determined to see beyond his isolation.
Time has made his mood our own, as more and more listeners find in the “loner folk” of the ’60s/’70s a past reflection of their present zeitgeist.
