From The Outside In

I'll have to be honest, ordinarily, when the words "singer" and "songwriter" are suffused together, it is usually enough to make me run a country mile in the opposite direction, which is probably not the most prudent of admissions, given that I am charged with covering music by our humble publication and, as such, probably expected to maintain some semblance of musical objectivity.

But in the interest of candor, I must confess that I would normally place most singer/songwriters in the same category of those "artists" that chose to make their living either yodeling or in the soulless field known as modern country.

Perhaps it's the same, samey-ness that often typifies the sound, or their natural proclivity to whine more often than sing, but there are very few proponents of this genre that have made an album beyond 1980 that have managed to tickle my ivories, so to speak.

And yet, every so often there is that occasional anomaly that manages to connect with something deep inside of me and, when it does, I readily admit that it can be a thing of real beauty.

Call it the exception that proves the rule or the dawn after a long dark night, but there are those rare advocates of this musical type whose imagination, flair and creativity manages to stir something inside even such a cynical, inimical critic as myself. It just so happens that Ireland has produced the latest one.

Adrian Crowley was born in Malta, the son of a Maltese mother and Irish father, who had met while traveling North Africa in the 1960s.

Indeed, his family moved around several countries before deciding to settle in Connemara, County Galway, which offered its own barriers despite the obvious warmth of it's stunning countryside.

The region is known for its rather insular manner, something that is often a key factor in the decision of those who decide to move into the area, but a trait that can be a touch intimidating for some who chose to make it home, for you will basically always be known as outsider no matter how long you spend there.

Reinforcing this notion of being a stranger in a strange land was the fact that he was introduced as "Adrian from Malta" to his new schoolmates, thus leaving him with the impression that he was "less than fully Irish" and causing the naturally shy child to withdraw further into his own world.

He is the first to point out, however, that his childhood was certainly not an unhappy one, just tinged with the sense of being an interloper, driven home by his indifference towards sports, in a county that is perceptibly sports mad. Instead, he found solace in books or in his own words, which he would readily scribble into notebooks as he sat far from the madding crowd, alone with his thoughts and dreams.

Upon leaving school to study architecture in Dublin, he remained as shy as ever but now found himself truly unhappy as he moved through a dozen apartments and dreamed of dropping out of a course - and career - that he found rather mundane and unfulfilling.

It was only when he moved in with his closest friend that life took a turn for the better, as his friend pursued a life in music as a member of a slew of different bands. Often times, their apartment would be packed with musicians, and as he gradually emerged from his shell, he eventually began to partake in the free-for-all sessions that were an almost nightly occurrence.

His initial curiosity soon turned into an all-consuming passion for music, and it is not an exaggeration to say that he had finally discovered that missing element that gave him the sense of purpose that had all but eluded him until this point.

In 1998, he even summoned up the courage, at great personal strain for one so introverted, to play his first live gig, which turned out to be an informal affair to the lunchtime crowd in Trinity College.

Again, it was a watershed moment in his life as he proved that he could actually perform to strangers, despite the fact that he had not slept a wink the night before due to crippling nerves.

His path had now been chosen, and after a year spent living in France, he returned with a clutch of demos that became his first album, A Strange Kind (1999), although "album" was perhaps too strong a word, as it was little more than a cassette tape that he hawked around with no distribution or promotion.

It did, however, eventually make it to the US, where it was put out by a tiny New York label two years later, and circuitously led to him working on the follow-up with no less an aficionado than acclaimed producer, Steve Albini.

Retaining the lo-fi/DIY feel of the predecessor, the album was recorded in its entirety inside five days, giving it an inherent rawness and sense of spontaneity. It's title, When You Are Hear You Are Family (2001) was inspired by a piece of graffiti he noticed on a wall in New York, and it garnered enough interest to see him tour around the US but also throughout Europe with the likes of Scottish underground kingpins, King Creosote and James Yorkston, of Fence Records who would evntually release his work in the UK.

Three years later he returned with A Northern Country (2004), an album that was recorded almost entirely in his sister's house, which was practically empty as she awaited the move into a newly purchased property.

Again, the album made barely a ripple in the mainstream but scored well amongst those shrewd enough to pick up on this burgeoning talent, and it proved sufficient to secure him opening slots with similar minded artists like Badly Drawn Boy and Jose Gonzalez.

In between all of these musical movements, he also took the time out to marry Nathalie, who had been working in Dublin as a French au-pair and the couple have since had one child together.

Crowley is on record praising his wife for her undying support and encouragement, and the fact that she realized from the very start that there would effectively be three people in the marriage, the two of them and his muse.

In one of those happy cases of lightening striking twice, his sister's home once again became a crucial factor in his career when she asked him to housesit and look after her dog last year.

He immediately set about transforming her home into a temporary studio, in order to begin work on what would eventually become his fourth album, but surely not even his most ardent supporters could conceive of what was to come.

Employing the help of the aforementioned Yorkston, he spent five days getting the bulk of the recording done, but paid more attention than ever before to the nuances and arrangements of melodies, vocals and instruments.

In the following weeks, like some perfectionist painter, he would return to the recordings again and again to add a brush stroke here and a flourish there, until he was entirely happy with the result.

Whatever the formula, it became immediately apparent that this was something special indeed when Long Distance Swimmer, arrived on shelves in the latter part of 2007.

Melancholic without being truly maudlin, chock-full of imagery and imagination without a hint of pretension, and packed with songs that offer instant aural gratification the album is certainly one of the stand-out Irish albums of last year, and possibly of all time.

Achingly beautiful, utterly honest and wholly engaging, it genuinely gets better with every listen and deservedly received a nomination for the Choice Music Prize several weeks back.

To those that say it is his crowning moment after years of exertion in anonymity, Crowley is on record as asserting: "I don't feel as if I've been struggling, I haven't even been keeping count of how many albums I've made. I suppose I've always felt that if I just kept on going, people would finally get it... The reality is that I've no choice about making music because it's the only thing that makes me fulfilled."

I, for one, am very glad that this compulsion has kept him going, as he has created something capable of giving such a sense of fulfillment to legions of others.

He is also on the record as saying that because of the confluence of events leading to this point, the time is now right for him to get out on the road and see how far this album takes him.

If that is true, and there is any justice, then the future should bring this special talent to every corner of this earth in which there resides a music fan.