Interview: Adrian Crowley

Adrian Crowley looks dazed. It’s been two weeks since the nomination he thought he’d “no way” of receiving for next week’s Choice Music Prize was announced, and the eyes that dominate a face bursting with fragile character look weary. “Yeah, I really am,” he replies when asked if he is just that shattered. “All of a sudden, I’m talking about my music for hours and days on end. I feel like I’ve been mining the depths, considering questions for the first time and answering them for myself too. It’s been tiring but it’s a very satisfying type of exhaustion.”

The reason why the Dublin residing Galwayman is in such demand is Long Distance Swimmer, a quite special album – his fourth, released last December. A rich and intimate breakthrough, it should win at tonight’s ceremony in Vicar Street (UPDATE - although Super Extra Bonus Party were equally deserving winners). Recorded with a cast of ten in just one week whilst house sitting for his sister in South Dublin and looking after her Dalmatian Rosy, the album’s inception is certainly intriguing.

“The house was very old and had a lot of rooms that sounded really nice the way they were,” he remembers. “There were great acoustics in the stairwell; there’s a lovely sitting room where we recorded the drums and a landing where we did all the vocals outside my nephews room.”

So distinct a process that when he or producer Stephen Shannon now listen to the record they remember the precise capturing of screaming guitars in the shed or cello in the kitchen. Having also recorded his last album A Northern Country at his sisters, his approach is not too dissimilar to kids throwing a party when their parents are away on holidays.

“Different house, same sister,” he clarifies, chuckling at the thought of the mice playing while the cat’s away. “It’s funny because she was used to me coming over anytime she’d go away with a tiny bag with a four track in it, I wouldn’t bring a guitar, just use her piano. So that’s all she thought it was going to be but then we had cables running around the place.”

Was she a little surprised upon her return? “We put everything back before she came home but I did take some photos,“ he says before his voice drops, “which I haven’t shown her yet.”

Long Distance Swimmer is a sumptuous record - masterfully put together and sung with the considered assurance of someone in their thirties. Inspired by writers like American Richard Brautigan, it’s with a thoughtful lyrical touch rich in imagery that Crowley really excels. He’s not one to waste words, it appears.

“More like, if a words going to be there, it has to know why it’s there,” Adrian answers with a reflective tone that’s littered throughout the interview. “I focus so hard on words. I don’t mean to sound like they’re all squashed out one by one but I think over time I’ve got this visual way of almost constructing something, say if it was like a drawing, using as little carbon as possible to make the illusion and image to jump out and I use the same approach with words.”

Much of the album was recorded live including an afternoon spent sitting in the living room recording guitar parts opposite James Yorkston. A long time friend, Adrian reveals he is indebted to the Fife-man, Kenny ‘King Creosote’ Anderson and their fellow Fence Collective friends.

“I was close to, not giving up, but I was at a low ebb when I met them because I wasn’t really sure if there was anywhere for me where I could go and play regularly. I just met all these amazing people who are now good friends of mine and they’re doing what I do and loving what they do like I do.

Given then that Ryan Adams once told Rolling Stone that Adrian Crowley was one of his favourite things that people might not have heard of, was there ever a fear he’d remain simply a musicians’ musician?

“I was concerned about that for a while and you get frustrated. When that happened (Ryan Adams’ blessing), it was a gift that I didn’t believe at first. But it seemed for a while that anyone who was encouraging me was a musician or if I played a small gig in Dublin, there’d just be musicians and I was really worried about that (laughing). I needed to get away. This last two years or so though, there hasn’t been a complaint at all.”

Having found an audience only set to grow over those past two years, does he share the common critical consensus that Long Distance Swimmer is his stepping up to the plate record?

“Stephen (Shannon) first told me. I wasn’t really conscious of it. I was very excited and it seemed very fresh but it didn’t seem any different to anything I’d been doing. I knew I had progressed in a way. I still stand by the other records but yeah, Stephen was the first one to tell me he thought it might be important.”

As the pair commence preparatory work on the next record in the producer’s homebuilt Crumlin studio, you can’t help but feel the man behind the controls is underselling album number four a little. There are no might’s about it, this record is and will be very important in the career of Adrian Crowley.