ANYONE who has tuned into BBC 6Music of late will be familiar with Courage, the lead single on Conor O'Brien's third album and fairly typical of the bulk of it.
The palette is spartan, the mood pensive, with scant echoes of the lyrical and instrumental knots that weighed upon debut Becoming a Jackal and its follow-up, Awayland.
Equally significantly, the fact the Dubliner plays every note is less impressive than how unobtrusive his omnipresence is throughout the disc.
The dolorous beauty and emotional heft of Courage re-emerge on No One To Blame, Dawning on Me and Hot Scary Summer, songs that veer into territory stained by tides of romance and regret.
The lyrical tricks of Hot Scary Summer, a look back at the end of an affair, are no mere technical exercise: "We got good at pretending/And pretending got us good," sings O'Brien with controlled passion over his most convincing tapestry yet, which comprises little more than guitar, drums, bass and a shifting fog-bank of keyboards. You sense he means it.
If choosing to play, record and produce his third album had the consequence of focusing O'Brien on reining in his penchant for poetic ostentation, then he should be exhorted to repeat the formula. This is an enchanting and compelling album that confirms he is a songwriter and multi-instrumentalist with no little magic in his fingertips.
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