Item: Cocooning Heart
Rating: 3

Cocooning Heart

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Artist: Myles O'Reilly

Genre: Alternative

Label: Doolin Arts

Covid lockdowns were difficult, but it’s clear that they hit some people harder than others. Film-maker and musician Myles O’Reilly was forced into “exile” at home due to a weakened immune system following recent health issues. Eventually, the Dubliner borrowed a Moog synthesiser from a neighbour (as documented in the scene-setting opening track), decamped to his attic and made an album.

O’Reilly’s previous work released under [Indistinct Chatter] was heavy, atonal and ambient. This collection is described as “psychedelic folk balladry” and retains the ambient and experimental vapour trails of his earlier work, adding a confessional, vulnerable lyric sheet into the mix. (Shine sees him deflecting naysayers of his early creative work with lines like “I was told there wasn’t money in crying to a song”). Occasionally, his tendency to wallow prevents an idea from fully blooming, as heard on the likes of Flying Home, and the suffocating drudgery of lockdown life is sometimes too prosaic to enjoy.

Happily, it’s contrasted by songs that flitter with a steely optimism, like the guitar-led Early Morning Sun and the gentle wheeze of The Point of Disgust, while that borrowed Moog is put to good use on hypnotic instrumental Ponte 25 de Abril. Such a project could arguably be deemed self-indulgent by some, but O’Reilly’s dedication to building atmosphere around his songs forges a compelling artefact from a difficult period of his life.