He makes heartfelt love songs, with a naive, almost childlike innocence which brings to mind Daniel Johnston. The album opens with ‘Roll On’, a back-to-basics love song which contains lines like, “Hush my sweet darling, darling don’t you cry / The wind is gonna blow, the grass is gonna grow, the sun is sure to shine.” Many of the songs deal with personal struggle and self-doubt, but unlike many other songwriters who take this route, O’Connell always retains the hope of redemption, namely via the phenomenon of love. On ‘You Belong’ he sings, “The strongest weapon they’ve come up with yet / is a way of making a human forget / How to respect and love themselves / and share that love with someone else.”

O’Connell writes songs rooted in a refreshing simplicity, with a classic folk style that brings to mind fellow Canadian Mike Tod. Lots of his songs deal with escape from our modern money-driven culture. For example on ‘Roll On’ he sings, ”Don’t you go chasing those tainted paper greens / Open your heart, don’t fill it up, bust it at the seams.“ In the wrong hands these kinds of messages can come across of happy-clappy hippie-speak, but O’Connell’s disarming naivete means that you really believe what he is saying.

The fact is that in order to solve some of the biggest social and environmental issues that we currently face, we must learn to live within our means. This means that the modern obsession with material wealth and financial growth must be replaced with something else. O’Connell’s suggestion is to obtain the small number of things that we really do need and then enjoy them with people that we love.

You can get Wet Moccasin Moondance on a name-your-price basis via Bandcamp.

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