‘When You Are Here You Are Family’

Soft, haunting, slow and scrawling, Adrian Crowley captures an essence on When You Are Here…

There’s an atmosphere in this. Its ambience and ethereality penetrate and cover everything in a heady, thick sonic chime. It’s poetic in song and gentle in sound, encased in sturdy traditional structures that don’t waver under the strains of instrumentation or that rich, melodic voice.

With a distinct combination of deep cellos, reverberant guitars and softly crashing drums, Crowley’s songs move in slow, tender tones, tripping and falling over melodies and harmonies like mercury. Every sound moves so effortlessly and with such fluidity that it’s all too easy to overlook the intricacies in favour of the general hue of the record. Take for example track number four, ‘North Shore Song’. Cellos glide over a soft chorus of guitar chimes and lightly brushed cymbals, weaved together by Crowley’s voice – detached but emotive, boasting lyrics worthy of a Jeff Buckley inlay card.

Essentially, When You Are Here… defines a talent on the Irish music scene. The melancholic, subdued sounds that characterise this record class themselves beautifully amongst Crowley’s lovingly crafted songs and Steve Albini’s production to make this album a diamond in the rough.