"Sometimes I move slow, sometimes I move fast" sings BD Harrington during Early Morning Eye. On this Irish Canadian singer songwriter's third album there is not much evidence of the latter and plenty of the former.
The 11 songs have a uniformly moody and maudlin quality, with a sloth-like delivery that engenders the lines with a glacial despair that is the polar opposite of a joie de vivre.
Harrington sounds like a sleepy Townes Van Zandt, weighing each word as though each utterance is laden with doubt or despondency. "Time is not a gift, it is a threat", he reflects morbidly on Apple Cart.
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Recorded in East London, this was originally intended as a solo work stripped back to just voice and guitar. Somewhere along the way it evolved into a full band production with occasional orchestral arrangements and bursts of twang-driven menace.
There's poetic Cohen-esque yearning running alongside the world-weariness but ultimately the delivery is so downbeat you end up longing for at least one song in which the singer is waving not drowning.
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