Aoife O’Donovan brings her trademark knack for eloquent arrangements into “Age of Apathy”. The album is delivered with subtlety and sophistication rarely begotten by mainstream folk releases. It is guided liberally by jazz structure as its songs often wander off the beaten path from its primary melody. Yet, it’s with a knowing that it’s meandering with one long loop—a singular grounding intention that makes these open-ended tunes more comforting than not.
A savvy and generous collaborator, Aoife is one third of the group I’m With Her with bandmates Sara Watkins and Sarah Jarosz. The trio’s debut album “See You Around” was hailed as “willfully open-hearted” by NPR Music.
The album haunts where it may or may not be intended, such as in the uncertain confidence of O’Donovan’s soaring vocals on “Phoenix”, where the narrator proclaims themselves above a failed relationship. The gorgeous composition of “B61” is interlaced with the dim truth of growing older, if not more uneasy. All in all, it’s another beautiful thought piece from the revered singer-songwriter.
Aoife O’Donovan operates in a thrilling musical world beyond genre. Deemed “a vocalist of unerring instinct” by The New York Times, she has released two critically-acclaimed and boundary-blurring solo albums including “In the Magic Hour,” which Rolling Stone hailed for its “Impressionistic, atmospheric songs [that] relay their narratives against gorgeous pastoral backdrops.
Aoife O’Donovan’s third full-length studio album ‘Age of Apathy’
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