Dublin based Adrian Crowley returns with his eighth studio album and follow up to 2014’s ‘Some Blue Morning’.
Recorded in four days in May 2016 in Thomas Bartlett’s New York studio, the record captures not merely Crowley at the apex of his songwriting powers but also the creative lava that can flow when two perfectly aligned musical minds come together.
American producer and musician Bartlett, aka Doveman, has worked with an array of artists such as Sufjan Stevens, Martha Wainwright, The Magnetic Fields and Anna Calvi. Bartlett’s contribution to ‘Dark Eyed Messenger’ is variously unsettling, comforting and effervescent, eliciting a sweeping array of dream-like sounds and deploying dissonance where the listener might least expect it. The result is an immersive record that inhabits a world of dusk, dreams and desire.
Evoking fragments of such diverse works as ‘A Walk Across The Rooftops’ by The Blue Nile and ‘Deserter’s Songs’ by Mercury Rev, ‘Dark Eyed Messenger’ sounds like it took ten times as long to make as it did, an illusion that is testament to the strength of the partnership that forged it.
While crowned as ever with Crowley’s mahoganied baritone, ‘Dark Eyed Messenger’ is the artist’s first set untouched by the instrument with which he is most associated, guitar.
The striking cover art for ‘Dark Eyed Messenger’ comes courtesy of Galway-based visual artist Louise Manifold.
TRACK LISTING
The Wish
Halfway To Andalucia
Silver Birch Tree
Little Breath
Valley Of Tears
The Photographs
Unhappy Seamstress
Catherine In The Dunes
Lullaby To A Lost
Astronaut
And S Goes The Night
Still This Desire
