In the last few years, New York-based Paul Spring has mainly worked as a recording engineer and performer with artists such as Fleet Foxes, Mary Lattimore, and Blackthought, but here he gives us his own richly realised record, with deft lyrics and considered sensibility.
As a teenager, he lived in Spiddal, Co Galway, when his father taught at the university, and it was there that his love for Irish traditional and folk music grew. Drawing on his roots, influences such as Bach, and instruments — think of the Irish flute — the album reveals a steady beauty over the course of its 12 songs.
Mingling a sense of tradition with modernity, songs such as Beetle on a Blade and Time Has Other Plans are dazzling in their textures, as choral influences and electronic elements are combed through a sense of the Irish tradition.
Invocation II is a moving prayer, God Bite is pleasingly frantic, Look Alive sounds like Simon & Garfunkel reshaped for the 21st century, and Valley of Fire is pared back beauty, with glorious guitar — it is a hidden pop gem, riffing on the sounds of New York and the epic distillation of the landscape of the west of Ireland.
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Spring has said that the album is an examination of anger — how it can be passed on in different ways. But that theme weaves its way softly on this gorgeous record, as moments of clarity emerge amid the duality.
