The Chapters: Blood Feels Warm

The Chapters hail from Dublin. First formed a decade ago, their widely acclaimed 2009 debut, Perfect Stranger, earned them comparisons with everyone from Bruce Springsteen and Neil Young to Wilco and The Blue Nile. Since then, they’ve lost two original members and been dropped by their record company. Not that they’re stressing about it. On this sublime sophomore effort, they sound like Kings Of Leon coming down from a particularly blissful mushroom trip.
Co-produced by the band and Joe McGrath, and financed through a successful :fund:it campaign, Blood Feels Warm was recorded with the help of many musician friends over 18 months, between Windmill Lane, the Hellfire Studios and a couple of home recording facilities. Having added pedal steel, accordion, harps and strings to their sound, the vibe is mostly mellow, laidback and easy-going. Even when the tight playing begins to get more urgent, as it does towards the end of ‘Two Good Reasons’, it tends to stop abruptly. Featuring gorgeous vocal harmonies, some of these songs would sit quite comfortably on the Oh Brother, Where Art Thou? soundtrack (eg. ‘Bees In A Jar’).
Frontman Ross McNally’s understated, world-weary vocals are the cracked counterpoint to the gloriousness of the music. At times he sounds more than a little like Caleb Followill, and, possibly coincidentally, they even have a song titled after the KOL singer’s ‘Rooster’ alter-ego: “Red rooster, red rooster/ You took this down/ Narcissism burns atop your self-proclaimed crown/ I’m not sure I love this anymore.”
Very much a whole and complete album that plays best from beginning to end, as opposed to a loose collection of songs, Blood Feels Warm is a lush, occasionally melancholic, deeply textured and effortlessly cool musical experience. Bloody brilliant!

Key Track: ‘Arcade Of The Scribes’