Fionn Regan comes from that acoustic singer-songwriter mould, which the likes of Bob Dylan and Neil Young well and truly exhausted decades ago. However, unlike those famous proprietors of folk, Regan is a highly accomplished musician on both a technical and compositional level, whilst retaining that poetic bravado. Dylan and Young were lyrically adept, but technically slapdash; Bert Jansch and Roy Harper technically masterful, yet lyrically exigent; Regan walks a lovely line between the two, telling both pastoral and urban tales of love, loss and sorrow with a tinge of rock – a modern Nick Drake. Ireland has a rich history of weighty storytellers. The list is endless: Samuel Beckett, James Joyce, C. S. Lewis, Iris Murdoch, Liam O’Flaherty, Bram Stoker, Jonathan Swift, and Oscar Wilde to cite only a fraction. Regan, who hails from the island’s east coast, whether it is by nature or culture, has that storytelling prowess.
The opening, title-track, is a frosty minor-keyed waltz rhythm adorned with sonorous oriental strings and truly summons images of boundless woods. His sophomore album, The Shadow of an Empire (2010), had a more rock-based aesthetic; here the Irishman returns to an acoustic palette as in the vein of his first album, The End of History (2006). The difference this time around is that he has compounded his newfound sense of rhythm with his pre-existing penchant for natural ‘dreamlike overtones’, to quote the man himself. Tracks such as "The Horses Are Asleep", "For a Nightingale", the sublime "North Star Lover" and "Vodka Sorrow" typify this convergence. The only notable weakness of the album lies in pastures new: orchestration. On occasion, copious portions of piano and strings detract from such otherwise inventive sketches, as on the Wordsworthian "The Lake District".
Regan is at his best when thinly accompanied, as on "Sow Mare Bitch Vixen", the irresistible "Dogwood Blossom", "List of Distractions" (uncannily similar to Dylan’s "Boots of Spanish Leather") and "1st Day of May". A devotee to the turn-of-phrase, lines like "They’ll be hell to pay / In heaven" and "Things that fall together / Just as easily break," are lyrical treasures, particularly amidst their musical surroundings. The quirky, magic-realist world of star-filled bedrooms, carriage arms, ballerina clocks, brown-bag alcoholism, aligned hips, ghostly laneways and green hills is paradoxically real and unreal, familiar and unfamiliar. Either way this world is magical. 100 Acres of Sycamore is a precious example of eccentric lyricism and delicate song-craft – a bastion of hope for musical narratives in a vacuous age.
