Joey Gavin: Between the Mountains and the Mystery

You may not have heard of Irish songwriter Joey Gavin because he’s one of those musicians whose focus is so much on the music that he doesn’t appear to concern himself with anything so trivial as self-promotion. Flitting between Dublin and Berlin, Gavin has been releasing solo music since 2017, but it has taken him until now to release a debut album. Recorded over three years across Ireland, Germany and Crete, Between the Mountains and the Mystery isn’t what you might expect from a co-founder of the mighty Irish rock band Thumper and the Berlin-based improv group Deep Turtle.

Rather, it shifts in tone between melodious finger-picking folk (Sierra, I Want You to Stay, Spellchecker, Water), subtle psychedelia (the Pink Floyd-like Golden Hour and Evening City Calling) and the kind of depth-charged ballads (Unlucky One, Home Sweet Home) that sound as if Nick Cave lost them on his way back from a day at the office.

Stylistically, there isn’t a shudder to be heard — the eight tracks are presented in a contemplative way, very much at home with themselves as solitary songs and with each other as a collection — while textures include all the “warm” instruments you would expect: violin, cello, synths, accordion, flutes, Hammond organ, clarinet, sax, guitar, double bass and piano. For fans of alt.folk/pop, it rarely gets any more poised or better.