Dean: Seamus Fogarty’s folktronica conjures the mood of the Atlantic coastline

Seamus Fogarty’s music is often described as “folktronica”, a term that typically encompasses music that sounds like it was forged in a cabin in the woods by a plaid-shirted balladeer who had the wherewithal to bring not just an acoustic guitar but the machines to add beeps and blips. In the case of Bon Iver, this description is very literal – his still-brilliant 2007 album For Emma, Forever Ago was forged in the confines of an isolated cabin in Wisconsin, adrift from the world.

Throughout his decade and a half recording career, Fogarty has often explored the same discipline. Synths and beats are adornments to more traditional sounds, ensuring the music retains a certain pastoral sensibility. Banjo plucks can be paired with field recordings, such as snippets of conversations caught on tape. His latest album, Ships, unites similarly disparate elements across nine songs that nonetheless feel organic, comforting and intimate. Though based in London for a good few years now, Fogarty has not shaken off his Mayo roots. Ships conjures familiar Atlantic coastline moods: skyscraper-sized sea cliffs; light rain hitting oceanic dunes at 6 in the morning.

Much of the atmosphere is derived from Fogarty’s voice: rustic and tightly wound, you don’t need a superhuman ear to detect the confirmed influence of American alt-country hero Bonnie “Prince” Billy. The vocals lend Ships a feeling of being sparse and intimate. This is an illusion. In fact, serious support comes from a faction of first-class session musicians including drummer Chris Vatalaro (whose client list includes Anohni and the Johnsons), horn player Joe Auckland (Oasis), and Fogarty’s partner Emma Smith (a touring member of Pulp). With mixing by Brian Eno collaborator Leo Abrahams, the sumptuous arrangements frequently pulse and swell, though, crucially, they never overwhelm the sense of tranquillity that Fogarty’s best music tends to project.

Take the title track, inspired by the English artist Tracey Emin and a pink neon sign of her words, “I never stopped loving you”, that decorates the entrance of Droit House in Margate. Fogarty’s unfussy melody is at first supported by some chipped acoustic guitar chords and not much else, his eye for detail working the minutiae of “pushers on the street” and “corduroy trousers and blue puffer jackets” into the lyrics. The quietness is interrupted as more and more sounds are stacked onto the arrangement – warbling synth patches, well-honed drumming – until the whole thing crescendos with lilting strings that call to mind the work of celebrated pop producers Van Dyke Parks and Jon Brion.

The extra sonic elements are sometimes more rasping. A pulsing beat underpins “I Passed Your House”, a dedication to a lost friend which finds memories flooding to Fogarty as he stands outside their “four-bed on a quiet country road”. Elsewhere, “Fire” pulls the neat trick of using a harsh synth sound to evoke a sense of dread that makes way for more comforting instrumental play, like the sun bursting through dark clouds.

Most striking song is “They Recognised Him” and its John Cooper Clarke-nodding, half-spoken-word, half-lazily-sung, performance over a dusty trail of guitars and drums that is said to be partially inspired by hours Fogarty spent during various Covid-19 restrictions listening to early-90s hip-hop. (And is said, kids, to be Cillian Murphy’s favourite Seamus Fogarty song.) 

The wordplay is looping and eccentric: “They recognised him outside the pub smoking a fag, reading a book about Solzhenitsyn in the gulag,” Fogarty recites cooly. Though it’s already a couple of years old, the inclusion of “They Recognised Him” on Ships offers an interesting change of pace at the album’s midway point and a welcome sonic divergence for Fogarty that he should further explore. (Tagging the album as “experimental hip-hop” on Bandcamp, though, might be a stretch.)

It’s closer “Doer Undoer”, however, that impresses the most. The vocals howl over a simple guitar motif before the band once more takes flight with layers of horns, percussion crashes, and audio distortion all spliced into the mix. It’s a triumph of holding back the dam, ensuring all the beauty on display isn’t washed out. Great folktronica relies on such instincts; only a most divine matchmaker can successfully bring together the seemingly incompatible so harmoniously.