Sketch The Day, Paint The Sky

Recognise the scene? The sun’s on its way up, the beers are finished, only the die-hard few are braving out the end of the party and the conversation’s turned serious. You need to turn the music down. So you scavenge for something that’ll just melt away the last hour before you really have to go home. Sketch The Day, Paint The Sky will do just fine.

10 songs, 43 minutes, this is yet another fine Irish album where less is overwhelmingly more. Half the tracks were put down in London under the influence of Bernard Butler and the rest back in Dublin with Roesy himself producing. Butlers presence is written clearly over his contributions. He adds bass, piano and Fender Rhodes to several of the tracks, so unsurprisingly there’s a similarity in texture and sound to his own debut solo LP. And then there’s Roesy’s voice – a curious hybrid of James Taylor and David Gray that somehow betrays his Offaly roots. All good so far.

‘No Time For Crowds’ is a beautiful, piano driven endeavour that Taylor forgot to record – “Get your things together/I’ve prayed for sunny weather/I believe it’s gonna work this time.” ‘The Late Train’ begins with bare acoustic guitar before an unassuming saxophone steals in over the chorus. ‘Night Hawks’ – a perfect dawn wake up call – is an earthy croon over a double bass while ‘Life Is More Perfect Than Gold’ manages to capture the desperate thrill of loving life without sounding overblown. Who said joyfulness was difficult to capture?

James Taylor, sax, double bass and exuberance? Sounds like a recipe to give a wide berth to. But Roesy somehow pulls this off and Sketch The Day... is a genuinely loveable, good for your health blanket that you should wrap yourself up in this winter.