Seamus Fogarty - The Curious Hand

The Guardian 100

Domino

After apprenticeships with the innovative small Scottish labels Fence and Lost Map, Seamus Fogarty has joined the big league with Domino Records. This stunning, mercurial album shows us why. Held together by Fogarty’s lovely unadorned voice, it constantly unwinds and uncoils, taking us on magical journeys through fable and modern life and back again, often in the same song. Gorgeous electronics, recorded dialogue and woodwind give deeper shades to the more traditional sounds, and its cast list is rich. Here are entertainers boiled to the bone and strung high, men digging holes who explode like nail guns, hens “taking flight” in Temple Bar and Van Gogh, who leaves one ear on “so he could hear”. We also sweep between locations beautifully, from “a mile beneath the broken heart of London Town” to snowy Chicago landscapes and fields that stretch forever. Longing, humour and sadness accompany us, never letting us go.

Thu Oct 12 17:30:10 GMT 2017

The Guardian 80

(Domino)

This Irish singer-songwriter may ply his trade as a folkie – meaning his shows are him with guitar and banjo – but on record he becomes an electronic shape-shifter, layering songs in beats, loops, hisses, clunks, wheezes, found sounds and bites of conversation. His storylines, delivered with rueful hindsight, are similarly surprising. Carlow Town relates a night crashed out in a church, awakening to a mass. Van Gogh’s Ear captures a disturbed mind amid the hurly burly of London’s underground, and the title track’s reminiscences of his County Mayo youth come enhanced by wistful violin from Emma Smith. By turns gritty and poetic, its words “scattered like teeth”, it’s also a real original.

Sun Oct 01 07:00:11 GMT 2017