Seamus Fogarty – Ducks and Drakes EP

There’s nothing hurried or harried about Seamus Fogarty’s music, as Ducks and Drakes favourably attests. The EP’s title track opens with its protagonist lying back and contemplating the summer sky, and the atmosphere only grows more pleasingly placid from there, with found sounds and field recordings helping to evoke all manner of fleeting remembrances and fugitive feelings.

Each track is beguiling in its own right, but the ten-minute long A Mile Beneath the Broken Heart of London Town warrants special mention for the way it draws together all of Fogarty’s best qualities: lyrics that spin stories from the smallest of details, song structures that freely meander without getting lost, and production that balances the rough with the smooth beautifully.