Adrian Crowley, Book’d @ Prim’s

“Like a gothic Leonard Cohen - leaving you aching for more” - UNCUT

ADRIAN CROWLEY

Prim's Bookshop

Sunsay, March 15th

Door : 7.30pm

Show : 8pm

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Adrian Crowley is an award-winning songwriter, singer, and composer who has, in over two decades, created a deeply affecting body of work. The Dublin-based artist is noted as having a uniquely dark poetic sensibility and an arrestingly resonant voice. His songs have lead him to being described as a master story-teller and the rich tapestry of his expansive recorded output is proof that he is an endlessly inspired and inspiring artist.

Crowley has won the Choice Music Prize for Irish Album of the Year for his record ‘Season of the Sparks’ in 2010 and been nominated on another occasion in 2007 for ‘Long Distance Swimmer’. Crowley’s tenth album ‘Measure of Joy’, produced by John Paris, was released in 2025.

“Like many artists, Adrian Crowley doesn’t know where his songs come from. But he knows how he felt each time one was born: a sense of release. Guided by instinct and catharsis, he did not plan a collection. And yet, the songs feel as if they were always meant to be together. I guess nowadays they call this a mood but, in my day, it was called a vibe. A cosmic vibe, sometimes. Stars in the sky, walking through the woods, the merciless dawns, an existential crush guided by a voice so calm and yet so sad, at the same time soothing and broken.

This is album 10 for Crowley: an achievement number and maybe even a career high, but the music doesn’t bother with that. They are just great songs. Crowley is a songwriter and a poet. Here, also, he is in the company of John Parish, who is always more than a producer. He’s been present in the beautiful ‘The Watchful Eye Of The Stars’ (2021) and they’d met in the ‘90s. They weren’t in touch again for many years until a mutual friend, Nadine Khouri asked Crowley to contribute backing vocals to her album that she was making with John. And so came the collaboration. Nadine Khouri is here too, in backing vocals for Adrian now, and her mysterious voice makes it all sound so rounded but not perfect, like stones in the riverbed.

‘Measure of Joy’ is a nocturnal album. Not in the usual commonplace sense of dark and moody though it can be. The night is present in the sounds that can only be noticed when most things rest. In the lost transmission and the ghost lips that talk on the phone over
sleepy jazz.

Perhaps there is a centerpiece in ‘Measure of Joy’, a song that stands out not because it’s better than the others –every song here is amazing– but because you can sense an absolute moment captured.”

Extract of the album biography, written by award-winning Argentinian author Mariana
Enriquez

PRAISE

So mesmerising” – John Kennedy Radio X

“A sensationally gifted songwriter with a totally distinguished voice” – Stephen McCauley BBC Ulster

“Sounds brilliant”– Cerys Matthews BBC 6

“Really gorgeous and affecting” – Roddy Hart BBC Scotland

“It is a fine night-time collection, not only in tone with its minimal orchestral arrangements
and brooding vocals, but also lyrically with nocturnal imagery woven through each track.“ – Americana UK

“Overall it’s an album of timeless, rough-hewn songs. As good an album as he’s ever released, Crowley just seems to get better and better.” – No More Workhorse