The Silver Sun

Although recorded in less than a single day, there is nothing rushed or hurried about Eamon O’Leary’s characteristically laid-back third long-player, The Silver Sun. The follow-up to 2018’s much-admired All Souls continues in the relaxed, confessional tone that has helped establish the Dublin-born singer-songwriter on New York’s Lower East Side folk music scene. Introspective musings on what was and what might have been proves to be the signature trope of this self-penned, nine-song set, infused by his understated delivery that coats his cracked-pepper voice with a touch of honeyed sweetness.

Witness the tenderly fragile musings of ‘The Living Stream’ or the wistful Leonard Cohen-like reminiscence of ‘Sister in Song’. O’Leary’s nonchalance is deftly inked in by fellow vocalist Elise Leavy and multi-instrumentalist Benjamin Lazar Davis, whose discrete contributions add to a decidedly mellow experience. Mingling with O’Leary’s guitar and mandola, Lazar Davis’ pump organ and mellotron add especially piquant touches of their own to plaintively voiced tales of fragile memories, chance encounters and lost opportunities. It’s all delivered with a becoming, quietly understated panache that never quite dilutes the lingering sense of melancholic bedsit introspection. Even so, it adroitly positions O’Leary in the long, venerable tradition of soulful folk troubadours.