Adrian Crowley is the source of great debate in the Totally Dublin office. See me, I say his music sounds like honey dripping from a wooden spoon. Another voice pops up saying he’s more a bathful of melted chocolate. We can’t even compromise and call him a Toblerone – his glorious new album, ‘Season of the Sparks’ is virtually angle-free, a golden floating cumulus cloud at sunset. Crowley’s career to date has been as slow to unravel as his music. Only with last album ‘Long Distance Swimmer’ did his Drakeist strumming strike the right chord. Spurred on by that low-key success, ‘…Sparks’ is an irresistible, strident opus of an artist in his prime.
The Irish Times remarked that you’re an artist that prospers from confidence – Did you feel you hit a purple patch after the acclaim the last album garnered? Has the acclaim Season of the Sparks already picked up pushed you all the more?
There is definitely something in that. The response to the last album, Long Distance Swimmer was extremely heartening and encouraging. It gave me a validation that helped justify all the time and effort I was about to invest in making another album! It makes a big difference to know that there is maybe a new audience out there anticipating the fruits of your labour.
Already the reaction to the new album is spurring me on even further.
Like your last album, there are distinct motifs running throughout Season of the Sparks – bees, honey, dreams. What are the meanings, or set of meanings attached to these recurring images? And how did they differ to the more maritime setting of the last album?
Yes that’s true there does seem to be a recurring imagery or a type of imagery to ‘Season Of The Sparks’. I’m not entirely sure how that started. I enjoy the mystery that comes with songs emerging. My only guide is a gut feeling that keeps me in check. I wasn’t conscious of the water imagery that ran through many of the songs of the last album at the time of writing. Likewise I wasn’t really conscious of the dominant images on ‘Season Of The Sparks’. I suppose there might be anarchetypal symbolism that recurs on the new record, one of Arcadian reverie but also the idea of impermanence and a lust for life in the present. You know?
What sort of hunger made you create this album?
An urge to lose myself in a strange landscape and to discover what’s hidden there.
There are some particularly obscure instruments used throughout the album. Do you seek out new musical devices, or do they find you?
Both really. I have amassed a collection of peculiar instruments that have taken up residence in my attic. On the new album I make use of marxophone, shruti box, upright harmonium,viola de gamba, baroque viola… and also some truly amazing guitar pedals that make the guitar into some new instrument that sounds nothing like a conventional guitar. My friend Marja Gaynor played the gamba and baroque viola.
Does this album reflect the input or influence of the Fence Collective? [the Fife-based DIY folk collective Adrian is involved with]
No not really, certainly not directly. The others in the Fence Collective haven’t heard the new album yet. Though they (people like King Creosote, The Pictish Trail and James Yorkston) are a constant source of inspiration, they have a very unselfconscious way of doing things, an amazing freedom to performing and writing that really grabs people and makes them realise what’s really important. I hope that ethos might have had a hand in my development.
There’s a certain poetic precision to both your music and your lyrics – if Season of the Sparks was any poem, what one would it be?
Nice question. I would say probably ‘The Choric Song Of The Lotus Eaters’ by Alfred, Lord Tennyson.
Adrian Crowley’s unctuous new album ‘The Season of the Sparks’ is released on the 1st May via Tin Angel Records.
Words by Daniel Gray
