Recorded over a single week at his sister’s Foxrock house, Adrian Crowley’s fourth album is a goose-bump inducing collection of folk ballads and bare-boned post-rock. Crowley often gets lumped with the alt.country set – Red House Painters, Smog etc – but a truer comparison is Ray Lamontagne. Like Lamontagne, the 39-year-old Galway native isn’t above letting raw emotion get the better of him: his work can be extroverted and even hot-headed, and is all the more powerful for it.
Loosely based around the theme of oceans, Long Distance Swimmer might just be Crowley’s masterpiece, an LP stacked high with brooding melodies and taut, threatening riffs. Mostly, the pace is soft yet ominous: on ‘Leaving The Party’ Crowley delivers a crooning vocal over juddering guitars; ‘Electric Eels’ ends in shrieking violins. The effect is suitable unnerving. Occasionally, though, Crowley likes to plug in: ‘Harmony Row’ is almost jaunty, with a lullaby chorus that recalls early Divine Comedy; ‘These Ley Waters’ climaxes in a swirl of female vocals. Cumulatively the effect is sweet, druggy and seductive. This is a superbly conceived and meticulously realised album. Don’t be surprised if Crowley scores the Choice Prize come February.