The Hard Ground - Triptych

Triptych, the second album from Cork quartet Marlene Enright, Pat Carey, Davie Ryan and Hugh Dillon, was originally released as three crowd-funded EPs, hence the title. That the resulting 13 songs work together as an album is a credit both to the quality of the songwriting and the production work of the band themselves and studio engineer Christian Best.
The Hard Ground’s strongest suit is the dual male-female vocals from Enright and Carey, although they don’t use them in tandem often enough for this listener’s liking. When they do combine their talents, as on the broodingly atmospheric ‘Capon’ or the call-and-response of ‘Coin Toss’, the results are truly extraordinary. The tender ‘Winter’ is a divine duet about the breakdown of a relationship where those involved are “Playing pirates and sailors, all at sea and out of sight”, while the delicious, piano-driven ‘Short Song’ may sound fragile, yet its lyrics have a real strength of conviction as they insist to the song’s subject, “You have got eyes so watch me leaving”.
Musically, it veers from the Brechtian theatrics of ‘Belles And Beaux’, complete with military drum tattoo, to the alt-pop of ‘Two ByTwo’, where Enright’s dreamy vocal contrasts nicely with the angular guitar work. For the most part, the arrangements are content to form an unshowy backdrop upon which the two singers can flaunt their considerable talents, like the gorgeous, tender ‘Spies’, the fragile acoustic ‘All In Time’ or the warm and rich ‘Pucker’, whose heartbeat-and-handclap percussion allows Enright’s voice space to shine, as she purrs "I'll bat my eyelashes at you/You'll see all kinds of blue".
They could have done without the bluesy rock-by-numbers of 'Ashes', which sounds like it’s aiming for Tom Waits but ends up more like a pub-rock covers band, but that’s the only real mis-step on an otherwise assured album.
KEY TRACK: 'Winter'