Adrian Crowley

“And so I am just as I seem / An interloper from some forgotten dream” sings Adrian Crowley on ‘Follow If You Must’. It is an apt description, for new album ‘Some Blue Morning’ hangs between sleeping and waking, between darkness and light, in the shadows crossing the ‘Hinterland’ of ‘The Magpie Song’ and in the colours of the sunset, so precisely described in ‘The Hungry Grass’.

Images from nature abound: seedlings, bark, wet leaves on the railway line, the Atlantic swell, morning dew, miles of pines, orchards and golden Palominos to name but a few. The natural setting is further developed by the palette of acoustic guitar and strings from London ensemble ‘Geese’ alongside cellist Kevin Murphy.

There is humour too, most notably a dreaded magpie “Raising holy hell”. Despite Crowley’s audible laughter, all does not end well with the bird continuing to haunt him in his ‘Carefree bed’ long after leaving. The line ‘The magpie called my name’ recalls Margaret Craven’s book ‘I Heard the Owl Call My Name’ in which the bird’s call foretells death.

Death is at the the heart of ‘Some Blue Morning’ and its utterly captivating centerpiece ‘The Wild Boar’. A short story about a car accident on a country back road, it is a hypnotic listen, superbly written and up there with ‘The Copper Top’ by Bill Wells & Aidan Moffat.

Overall ‘Some Blue Morning’ is a vivid, cinematic collection. A work rich in atmosphere, melody and imagery that lingers in the mind long after the last notes have faded into silence.