Wren

This is the debut album from Norabelle, an acoustic male indie folk duo from Louth. For NB, simplicity is key, their tender harmonies icing a cake of delicate acoustic guitar, piano, cello and percussion. There’s a beauty to ‘Gregarious Bird’ and ‘Wren’ that is truly breathtaking, the latter evoking David Kitt at his most sensitive. ‘Unfurl’ has a brittle quality, and there’s a quaint fragility to ‘Sleeping’, its plaintive cello and sublime voices making you want to tread softly across the room. ‘Road Maps’ gets slightly jaunty, a momentary aberration before the downbeat ‘Low Of Your Neck’, which mixes trademark Norabelle harmonies with discordant strings, repeated towards the end à la Reich or Neiman. Definitely a case of a little going all the way.