Fionn Regan - Cala (2019) [Hi-Res]

Fionn Regan's new album Cala starts as it means to continue: "Wear this crown of light for you on this August moon." The opening line of Cala's opening song, 'Collar Of Fur', combines elemental and romantic imagery with an equally luminescent melody and subtly keening vocal set like jewels in delicately fingerpicked acoustic guitar and "atmospherics," as Regan hears it: "Sparse cinematic moments, like a super-eight movie." The scene is set for a spine-tingling spell of a record, named after the Spanish word for 'cove', bathed in the balmy rays of summer and the iridescent light of that August moon. Ten songs and 35 minutes long, Cala is a concise statement but with deep pockets to tumble into, drawn by Regan's drowsy beauty and nuanced narratives. It's been this way with Regan, give or take the odd detour into busier/band territory, since his 2006 album debut The End Of History. As it happens, Regan hears a link in Cala's tone and setting to that first record. Both albums were written at Regan's home in Bray, on Dublin's coastal outskirts, which might partly explain Cala's recurring imagery: stars, moon, ocean, sun... "The album does have fundamentally elemental, visual components," he agrees. "I wouldn't mind knowing why! It's a mystery to me, how songs evolve. Thankfully, they do. But I've never got anywhere when I've tried to work it out." Yet, as Regan concedes, "the place you're from continues to resonate."The sound of Cala - also performed entirely by Regan - is similarly drawn from intuition, rooted in acoustic guitar and sometimes piano, and those atmospherics - "a kickdrum here, a footstamp there, some slight modern twists influenced by the time period we're in. I've not overthought it much. I hope the songs can shine in that way. The song comes first, then the sonic palate, then the words give a sense of place, or landscape." If there is a real place where these exquisitely haunting songs reside, it's somewhere close to heaven.