Protector

In the spring of 2020, having just released her gorgeous debut album Land of No Junction, Irish singer/songwriter Aoife Nessa Frances left her native Dublin to live with her father and two sisters in rural County Clare. Unable to tour during the global pandemic, she shifted her focus and began working on the songs that would form her next album. While the world around her shut down, Frances grew closer to her family and found a surprising sense of peace and protection in her new environment. When it came time to record, she decided not to return to the city, and with producer/multi-instrumentalist Brendan Jenkinson and drummer Brendan Doherty, began working out of a small house in County Kerry. The eight long tracks on Protector, Frances sophomore LP, reflect this sea change both in their personal lyrics and composition. Where her acoustic-leaning debut was a more intentionally pastoral affair, Protector has the agility and purpose of a collaborative effort and is more band-driven. Perhaps surprisingly, given the rural setting it was conceived in, the albums production leans toward synthetic tones and more sonic experimentation than on her folkier debut. Amid skittering drums and electric guitar, opener "Way to Say Goodbye" rides a darkly lilting melody through stacks of lush orchestration as Frances sings of early pre-dawn mornings, the time when she wrote many of these songs. "Emptiness Follows" builds from eerie minimalism into a classy swirl of harps, jazz trumpet, and strings while the droning "Only Child" slow-burns its way into Velvet Underground territory over the course of its seven minutes. The rhythm section of Jenkinson and Doherty creates a subtle but sturdy backbone over which Frances see-saws her strange melodic patterns. With the underlying support of her family and bandmates, Protector comes across as less lonesome than her debut, though the hushed mystique that is one of her hallmarks remains. ~ Timothy Monger