Bird of a diferent feather

Adrian Crowley has set himself apart from the flock with his latest release. "I've become more sure of myself," he tells JIM CARROLL

ADRIAN CROWLEY IS talking about expectations. It’s three years since he released Season of the Sparks and he had some quiet hopes for that record back then. In an interview at the time, he talked about reaching more people, playing better shows and challenging himself more. It was his fifth album and Crowley felt it was time to dream harder and aim higher.

“I never want to expect anything,” he says now. “That’s my default position, so anything positive does come as a surprise. It’s a harsh default, I know.”

It’s fair to say that Crowley experienced many surprises with his last album. It won the Choice Music Prize, attracted the Chemikal Underground label to his side and confirmed him as a gifted, articulate songcrafter.

Crowley, then, has every right to be confident about the new record. But even given the huge strides taken on his previous couple of releases, I See Three Birds Flying is a work of another stripe entirely.

The calibre of the songs on his sixth album is astonishing, as Crowley weaves a spell with lines and images which are astute, measured and mesmeric. The musical tone is also noteworthy, a gallery of detailed, nuanced melodies that are dashing rather than showy. It’s a confident, accomplished and majestic affair, the work of a songwriter firmly at home in his skin whose time has come.

“I’ve become more sure of myself,” says Crowley. “I find that a lot of people are very apologetic about what they do. It’s not that they don’t commit to what they do, but everything is ‘oh, I’m trying to do this’. Once you start to say ‘I’m a writer’, that helps you write, That’s what I’ve been telling myself over the last few years and there’s no reason why I can’t sit down and write.”

Crowley has found that writing and recording are helped by not complicating matters. “It’s good to not over-think things. The beauty of making records is that you can do them when and how you want and by yourself. You’re the master of things. That can be too much freedom sometimes, but I have my routine and I stick to it. I have a nice space to write in with a desk and window and stuff around me.”

This solitary process produced the bones of the new record. “This time around, I had a clear idea of what I wanted it to be. It didn’t start out huge and sprawling and get honed back like before. I thought it was going to be a quiet record and not a rock record. I felt that from making recordings at home and working on arrangements.

“A lot of the time, the quieter songs seemed to be bigger and the sparse songs much wider. The less things that were assembled, the better it seemed from a sound point of view, and I thought ‘I’d like to make a record like this’.”

He also challenged himself more by not going with initial arrangements and ideas just because they seemed right. “Sometimes you can learn so much from trying something new,” Crowley says. “The principle backbone of a piece of music might be a piano line, but it’s a good discipline not to become seduced by an early draft or rough work and become too enamoured with thinking that is how that song should always be. It’s good to be able to play a song with different instruments and in different ways. It’s a lovely way to discover the strengths of a song.”

As Crowley walked the streets musing on the album, he felt the themes reflecting the city. “When I first started feeling like a record was coming along, I made a mental picture of a whole landscape for record before I had finished the songs. It was very visual, and I don’t know how much is evident in the end, but it was a way of exploring ideas and influences. Some of the songs are about a parallel Dublin, but not really Dublin. A song can have fragments of those ideas and it then becomes something else.”

One of the standout songs on this album is From Champions Avenue to Misery Hill, a lost-and-found tale based around a couple of Dublin streets.

“It started out with the title. Some songs came quickly, but that wasn’t one of them. Lines would come out of nowhere when I was walking around, though it did take a while to develop. I think Champions Avenue still exists, but they’ve taken away the sign for Misery Hill because the area is being redeveloped and they wanted a more positive name.”

Crowley cites two significant others who’ve helped and encouraged him in his craft. One is new label Chemikal Underground.

“It’s amazing what the support of a loyal, long-established label does for you,” he says. “I was over in Glasgow recently to visit them and it’s very exciting to be part of this. I’ve been with labels before and they’ve been lovely, but it’s one guy and his kitchen with stuff stashed inder the sink.

“This is a massive step up and it makes things more possible. Getting the record released outside of Ireland is a given, for example. It’s also great not to have to rely on just one person who is controlling every aspect of what you do. There’s a great team there, the best one I’ve ever had. ”

The other is producer Steve Shannon, who has worked with Crowley on his last few albums.

“It’s great having such a good friend sitting in the room to do the recording, someone whose opinion you trust. It doesn’t feel difficult. There are no problems speaking your mind to the other guy because no one will take offence. Steve has a gift in that he can spot things you might overlook or leave out. He has given me a kick up the arse before and that’s good.”

On the eve of the release of I See Three Birds Flying, Crowley has great hopes for what’s to come and is not afraid to express them. There are still dreams and ambitions.

“I don’t want to make records for the sake of it. I remember saying to Steve once that there was no obligation on anyone to make another record unless you really feel like it and you can justify it to yourself first, and he was really taken aback by that.

“With Long Distance Swimmer, I felt like I was reaching more people than before. Then when the last album came out, there were expectations. Now, I’d like to step it up again. I absolutely don’t take anything as a foregone conclusion, but I would love to feel like I’m breaking through to more people and not in some crazy commercial way. I’d love people to hear this album and think it was my first record and then find out about the other albums. In the last few weeks, it does feel like this album is reaching new people. And I get a feeling of joy from that.”

I See Three Birds Flying is released today. Adrian Crowley plays the Peacock stage at the Abbey Theatre, Dublin, tonight and tomorrow