Gemma Hayes - Bones + Longing (2014)

Mercury music prize nominee Gemma Hayes returns with her sublime 5th studio album. Bones + Longing is a thing of strange and wondrous beauty. It carves out its own spooky spaces, reaching from her heart to your ear in a miasma of ghostly guitars and floating voices, haunting melodies and cryptic lyrics, gilded by subtle, understated instrumental touches and sudden, startling sonic interventions. "I wanted to focus on the heart of the music and not strive for technical perfection," says Hayes. "There are songs that desperately want to be anthems but we've done a kind of anti-production. Drums are only used sparingly. There's a lot of first takes, flaws and imperfections. It's a more raw form and that's scary. But when I'm singing, I know what I'm feeling. I just wanted the vocal take where I really meant it." This is the Tipperary native's fifth album. She was Mercury Prize nominated for her debut, Night On My Side, in 2002, and won the Meteor award in Ireland for The Roads Don't Love You in 2006.