Halves continue stellar year of albums for Irish bands

IT’S already been a stellar year for albums from Irish bands.

Tue, 30 Jul, 2013 - 01:00

Eoghan O’Sullivan

While Girls Names have been carving out a name for themselves through constant touring in the UK and Europe on the back of February’s The New Life, I am the Cosmos and Solar Bears crafted two of the finest dance albums around in Monochrome and Supermigration, respectively. Villagers have been reaching higher plains with Awayland and O Emperor are revelling in the new lease of life that Vitreous has given them.

If next year’s Choice Prize judges were already facing a tough task in narrowing down the field for Irish album of 2013, recent weeks won’t have done them many favours.

Dublin three-piece Halves have taken three years to release the follow-up to It Goes It Goes (Forever & Ever), an ethereal album that delved deeply into Sigur Rós territory and won them a Choice nomination. Boa Howl was recorded in Gothenberg and produced by the band themselves: Brian Cash and brothers Tim and Elis Czerniak.

Halves have never been afraid to test themselves, never been limited in instrumentation. While the likes of Kodaline can’t seem to think outside Coldplay-set rules, Halves have looked to the 1950s and 60s for inspiration, from the likes of Joe Meek and Gordon Jenkins. In interviews, they’ve railed against the listening experience, or lack thereof, offered by Spotify. Boa Howl is an expansive album, and it deserves full attention. The rewards are limitless.

On opening track ‘Drumhunter’, singer Tim asks the listener: “Are you feeling blue?” as skittery drums and elfish sounds surround him. The euphoria that is constantly gathering pace here never leaves Halves. Gemma Hayes makes an appearance on ‘Tanager Peak’, her vocals offering a soft counterpoint to Tim.

Halves have released Boa Howl on their own label, Hateistheenemy, a route that Come On Live Long have followed for their debut album Everything Fall. Out on the aptly titled Live Long Records, it’s the tender, emotional release to Halves’s sometimes impenetrable album.

Named after Mogwai’s second album Come On Die Young, the Dublin band seem like they’ve arrived at the right time. They want to drag people from their depressive surroundings to a happier place. COLL released two early EPs that won enough attention to record with Gavin Glass at Orphan Studios in Dublin. They’ve grown in confidence since, exemplified by the space that each song gets here. ‘Mountains’ implores the listener to search for their self- belief: “It’ll all turn out OK,” singers Robert Ardiff and Louise Gaffney declare. Simple but effective, it’s a theme the band return to throughout Everything Fall.

Some of the tracks wallows in that self-doubt, like the James Blake-esque ‘Little Ones’, where Gaffney tells of keeping yourself awake at night “watching everything, everything, everything fall”. On the glorious ‘Go’: “I woke up to find that nothing else had changed, everyone was gone.” And yet through all the tales of emigration (‘Say Your Prayers’) and distances growing between young love (‘Old Apart’: “I count to 10, I tip the can, I feel slow. I didn’t cheat I’m going home”), we know things will OK.

Like Elbow’s ‘One Day Like This’, Come On Live Long’s album closer, ‘Billions’, offers a defiant feeling. “What doesn’t kill us makes up strong,” we’re told, before the simple declaration that will make all our worries disappear: “Let me go dancing, the night is young.”

Halves and Come On Live Long have set such a high bar that Swords, who also released their debut album recently, Lions & Gold, don’t really stand a chance. At times beautiful (’Hips’), fun (’Lions & Gold’), and irritating (’All The Boys’) it suffers by comparison to these two albums. Whereas these sound fresh and exciting, there is little new here. They don’t reach the heights that Halves and Come On Live Long set — but to be fair, few bands this year will be able to keep up.