Adrian Crowley – Dark Eyed Messenger
The Irish singer's eighth album continues his fine recent run, augmented by the beautiful production of Thomas Bartlett; this is patient music, intelligently composed and painstakingly pieced together
On the opening track to Adrian Crowley’s eight album, there’s not a note wasted. A piano gently chimes behind a veneer of ambient noise. As Crowley’s deep, sparse vocals enter, the music continues to swell in the spaces between. This is patient music, intelligently composed and painstakingly pieced together. The Wish could, in fact, represent Crowley’s career in microcosm. It’s a love song (or one of yearning at least) that’s heavy in metaphor, poetry, atmosphere and orchestral sounds, currencies he's been dealing in for many years, and this track is among his finest.
On the sardonic Halfway to Andalucia, a deadpan Crowley is fleeing to the coast of Spain, just as a former lover is getting wed. It’s Bill Callahan meets Ernest Hemmingway and, once again, it’s excellent. The album was produced by Thomas Bartlett (aka Doveman, best known for bringing piano to Irish trad revivalists The Gloaming and long-time collaborator with many of Brooklyn’s finest, including The National and Sufjan Stevens) and his influence is huge. Woodwind and strings appear throughout, but where they would usually be associated with lushness, Bartlett’s dousing them in reverb gives the whole affair a half-dreamed quality. It feeds perfectly into Crowley’s surrealist musings on 'perfume ghosts' (Little Breath), his anthropomorphic self-portrait (Silver Birch Tree) and his nostalgic wanderings (The Photographs).
The last two tracks are weaker in comparison, rendering what could be a great album just good. Dark Eyed Messenger explores themes of love, loss, nature and memory with the sort of understated evocativeness Crowley has made his own.
Listen to: The Wish, Halfway to Andalucia