For all our adoration and dedication to the Irish music scene, most of us really don’t know a good thing when we hear it. How the hell else can we explain Adrian Crowley’s criminally underrated status on these shores?
While many of you have been frothing at the mouth over some truly anodyne singer songwriters of late, Adrian Crowley has been lurking in the shadows of the Irish music scene. Operating away from the scrutinous glare of the acoustic pack, Crowley has studiously perfected his craft, and A Northern Country is the damn near-perfect fruit of his labours.
Veering on occasion between sugary lo-fi goodness and sleepy-eyed acoustica, Crowley is Ireland’s real overlord of broody, mournful melancholia. ‘One Hundred Words For Snow’ is drenched in wonderful imagery, and the title-track is pretty much heart-stopping in its fragile beauty. ‘Harmonium Song’ is truly artful, almost experimental, imbued with a strain of gallic charm… it’s like the soundtrack to every great art-house film you’ve ever seen.
Crowley sings like an all-too wise storyteller, effortlessly delivering his observations of glacial mornings and ominous, dusky evenings. Overall, the album is drenched in dreamy, romantic sentiment and undiscovered poetry. Little wonder, then, he has been compared on occasion to the greats – Smog, Will Oldham, Leonard Cohen et al.
If there were any justice in the world, Crowley’s time would be right now, for this music is consummately, overwhelmingly and blindingly gorgeous.
nine /ten