NoCrows - Waiting For The Tide (2014)

This, NoCrows’ fourth album, is a milestone for the group. The first release since 2010’s “NoCrows on the Moon”, Waiting for the Tide has more vocals than any other NoCrows album, with the addition of singer-songwriter and multi-instrumentalist, Ray Coen to the NoCrows line up. It's also purely a "band" album: unlike the last effort, this record has no guest musicians. The music came together on two trips to Sligo's Coney Island. As Sligo-based Mallorcan guitarist Felip Carbonell calls it, "La Isla de Los Conejos", the island of the rabbits, it's a tiny island with just a few human inhabitants, nestled inconspicuously in the middle of Sligo bay, halfway between Rosses Point and Strandhill. The band went to Coney for its closeness, yet isolation. While the band wrote and played their music they enjoyed the views and the wildlife: majestic Ben Bulben, Sligo Bay, Oyster Island. As hundreds of rabbits frolicked in the fields outside the room, NoCrows were in full creative flow. The band’s line up has expanded to six in the past year: Sligo singer songwriter Ray Coen is the newest member. Having been drafted in on occasion over the past number of years, Ray has contributed much music and personality to the band, and so was invited to become a full-time member. Likewise, violinist & composer Oleg Ponomarev, of Loyko, Yurodny and Koshka fame, has toured and recorded as a guest of NoCrows for some years now and contributed a tune to the previous release “NoCrows on the Moon”. Ponomarev’s Eastern European Gypsy influence in the group has grown over time and this recording features two of his compositions as well as original material from his five bandmates. Coen and Ponomarev add their own creative force to an already swirling melting pot of musical styles and cultures, driven by Swiss cellist/mandolinist Anna Houston, Carbonell’s manouche guitar stylings and bassist Eddie Lee’s driving lines. The icing on the cake, as always, is Waterboys star Steve Wickham, whose fiddle playing and compositions shine. Wickham makes a particularly poignant vocal tribute to his beloved Sligo’s beauty on his song “Rainbow over Sligo”. It is truly a Sligo album, written and for recorded in Sligo, inspired by the place, its people and its beauty.