There’s a nice “fine wine” cliché we could start off with – but let’s just say that Ciaran Lavery ages very, very well. With his deep, penetrating eyes, weather-worn beard of fiery red, and ear-to-ear grin, the only way I could possibly know that the Northern Irish folk singer is in his mid-30s is his casual mention of it. That, and maybe the fact that his latest album Sweet Decay is steeped in the kind of maturity only age can bring.

Coming off the back of 2016’s Northern Irish Music Prize-winning Let Bad In, Lavery’s third album was conceived not long after his last. However, a rigorous touring schedule prevented him from recording it right away. “We started off in June 2016,” he reflects. “But it ended up being the longest time I’ve spent on an album. Because I had a really aggressive touring schedule, I could only work on this record sporadically. I was on the road, doing shows, then coming back and trying to re-immerse myself.

“Initially, I was working with my producer Ruadhri Cushnan, and we were basically just trying to see if there was a theme we could hang our coats on. Generally for me, it’s easier to craft one good song that I think works and say, ‘Here are the ideas, or the sounds, that we want to replicate’. That’s how I like an album to sound. In the same way that if you pick up a novel, you know that each chapter is relatable to the one before. It could be a development of the original idea, but you have the same style throughout.”

What kind of theme did they settle on then?

“I knew I wanted a fuller, better-rounded sound,” he explains. “I didn’t want to record two or three songs with a full band, and then have the rest of it completely stripped back. In essence, that would be two different albums. So I wanted to incorporate the full band. We had Rory Doyle on drums (Hozier, Bell X1) and Joe Furlong on bass (James Vincent McMorrow). Also, Saint Sister helped with the backing vocals. That was just an incredible team to be working with, and the timing worked out just right, because I was playing a lot of solo shows where it was all about keeping things very intimate. Then I was stepping into a studio where all I wanted to do was the opposite of what I was doing live.”

Sweet Decay, as the title might suggest, is an album of contrasts. For every ruminating, heart-on-sleeve confessional, there’s a clear-sighted understanding behind it. From the pain of Ciaran’s voice comes a strange acceptance.

“I think I was looking at a lot of the same things as my last albums,” he says. “The same heartbreaks, memories and issues, but with an older and more experienced head. It would be stupid to say that I’ll never make the same mistakes as I did in my twenties, but as an older person writing about it, there’s a sense of being able to take a step back and remove myself from the feeling. To see it from all sides. In my twenties, I pointed the finger when I got hurt. But now that I’m not afraid to call myself when I’m the problem. There’s an honesty now that I couldn’t achieve when I was younger and my ego was a bit more sensitive.”

The songs themselves, retain an intimate, personal quality that has made Ciaran the envy of his folk peers. These are the introspective musings conceived of a man who lives quite reclusively in the Antrim countryside with just his dog; a man who’s a self-described “wallflower”.

“Any of my really good friends would say that I’m independent,” notes Ciaran. “I’m not a barfly, I’m not the last person at a party – I’m the person who sits at a dinner party and dreads the conversation turning round to me. I thought when I got older I’d know exactly how to be in those situations, but I’m just not that person. So with all that, performance helps me deal with the outside world, it helps me communicate. Performance and talking are like night and day for me.”

All that being said, for someone who’s guarded at the dinner table, Ciaran is wonderfully articulate about his music. He’s certainly got reason to be – Sweet Decay is another triumph.

Sweet Decay is out now on AllPoints.