Thanks to various music industry jigs and reels, it has taken Oliver Cole – one-time frontman for Irish rockers Turn – the best part of five years to follow up his 2010 debut solo album, We Albatri. And while the adoption of avian album titles still continues, Cole has radically developed as a songwriter. Melancholy still runs through Year of the Bird, but it has little of the overbearing despair of his superb debut. What is most telling about it, perhaps, is how Cole has managed to flip expectations while still adhering to the basic principles of the (musically enhanced) acoustic singer-songwriter. Assisted by Glen Hansard, Gemma Hayes (on the dreamy Happy Prince) and former Turn colleague Gavin Fox, Year of the Bird unfolds gracefully through a range of carefully wrought folk-pop songs, more than several of which are of the classic variety.  facebook.com/pages/oliver-cole