Nature boy

“It’s 10 years now since I’ve started making albums,” muses singer-songwriter Adrian Crowley. “This new one was the easiest so far. It came about really easily – from writing to mixing, it all happened kind of fast.”

The album in question is Season Of The Sparks, the Dublin-based Galwegian’s fifth long player. Co-produced with Stephen Shannon, it’s not quite as sparse and melancholic as some of his previous work. Having said that, he’s not exactly rocking out either.
While there’s definitely a nature theme running through its ten tracks, he denies that there’s any apicultural agenda. “Bees? No! I did a cover of Ivor Cutler’s ‘Squeeze Bees’, which is a bit of a departure for me, and there’s another song called ‘The Beekeeper’s Wife’, but I would hope there isn’t a bee theme going through the album,” he laughs. “I didn’t have any map at all when I was writing it, but I suppose everything was written around the same time. Someone said to me that there’s a lot of light in it, and someone else mentioned that there’s a kind of pastoral feel. I go by instinct and, while I write a lot, I don’t keep everything. It’s usually only afterwards that you notice these things. To me, it’s just a celebration of life.”
Crowley’s last album Long Distance Swimmer was nominated for the 2008 Choice Award. Having flown under the cultural radar for so long, he says it came as a pleasant surprise.
“It gave me a real lift in terms of my self-belief and really opened my eyes as to how I was perceived in Ireland. Up to then, I really didn’t think anything was happening in Ireland at all. So it was a really great buzz in that way – a validation of something I thought wasn’t there. I kind of got the impression that people had been quietly watching my career for a while and they finally decided it was time to make some kind of gesture. Which was amazing. It helped me in many ways – personally and professionally.”
As it happens, Crowley’s had a lot of support and good fortune throughout his career. In 2001, the legendary Steve Albini agreed to produce his second album When You Are Here You Are Family. “That helped me in many ways. It was great in the first place that he agreed to do it. I was really sticking my neck out at the time – or so I thought. But once we got talking it felt like it was the right thing to do. And also it was easy because he was so easygoing. After I’d recorded with him, labels were far more willing to listen to what I’d done. So I got this American label Bada-Bing to release that album and two other ones.”
More recently, Ryan Adams namechecked him as one of his favourite songwriters in a Rolling Stone interview. “That was one of those strange things that happened totally out of the blue. I thought it was someone having me on when I first heard about it. I haven’t actually met him, but he came to one of my gigs after that. I was doing a short tour of the east coast of America with Damon and Naomi from Galaxie 500. And he came along to this show I played in the World Café in Philadelphia. Which was cool. But I didn’t go up to him afterwards... so it’s not much of a story.”
Despite all the accolades and acclaim, Crowley is still very much a fringe artist. However, he’s hoping that incessant touring will eventually reap rewards.
“My audience is pretty scattered around the UK mostly. Over the last couple of years I’ve been going over to the UK more and more. I started off in Scotland about four years ago playing with the Fence Collective in Fife. They have a festival every year called ‘The Homegame’. It’s run by King Creosote and four years ago he asked me to go over. After playing that, it sort of started the whole thing for me in the UK. I met small promoters from various parts of Scotland and England, and found myself going back there more and more.
“I’ve also done a couple of tours of America. So I felt my audience was scattered really thinly and broadly. But it was different in Ireland. Anybody I spoke to over here seemed to be under the impression that I was starting to wind down because I rarely played in Ireland. And anytime I did, people would say to me, ‘Oh, you haven’t gigged in ages’. Actually, I might’ve played 80 gigs since they’d seen me last.”