It has been a long journey, a slow but decisive evolution as a bassist for an Irish indie-rock band, JJ72, to embroider sounds without a defined harmonic identity, as evocative and thoughtful as it is searing and restless.
The metamorphosis is now complete, irreversible: from a solitary dream-pop musician to the vibrant voice of a cinematic mix of slowcore, goth-folk and ethereal-wave.
Hilary Woods with “Night Criú” explores emotional and musical abysses as enchanting as they are disturbing, with attention to writing and a concise and concise style that give life to songs with unusual and often unreleased forms.
The sickly and dark settings of “Acts Of Light” are now a sound fabric as solemn as it is sophisticated, the seven tracks of “Night Criú” are like grains of dust that slowly gather in narrow spaces until they become a solid and impenetrable body. Strings, wind instruments and percussion celebrate the poignant beauty of that world on the border between melody and experimental rarefaction, Hilary Woods creates images that are apparently out of focus, on the contrary vivid and profound, like snapshots captured fleetingly.
Already from the first notes of “Voce” the rhythm is indolent, sleepy, the dissonant rhythmic body slowly insinuates itself between electronic manipulations and a whisper of strings. In a moment, an overwhelming crescendo takes shape with cadences that are as deadly as they are bright, the voice intones a powerful melody with a horn section in tow that is as majestic as it is fairytale-like, “Faults” is undoubtedly one of the most beautiful songs ever written by Hilary Woods, but it is not the only pearl of “Night Criù”.
Hilary Woods' new album is a continuous succession of wonder and amazement, the penetrating reverberation of the voice in the hypnotic “Endgames”, the glow of the voice stuck on a few dark chords just torn by the sound of the violin in “Brightly”, and the undulation of drone music and folk of “Shelter” (emulating the most descriptive pages of Lankum), are intuitions that are not at all ordinary.
Enigmatic and evocative, “Night Criù” concentrates seven rich and intriguing hybridisations in just thirty minutes, on which stands the compelling and rhythmic refrain minmal-folk-goth of “Taper”, a song that flows into a thrilling finale entrusted to a children's choir, for a pagan marriage between sacred music and innocence, voices that then become the protagonists of one of the most evocative pages of the album: “Offering”.
A final mention for producer Big Dean Hurley, perfect master of ceremonies of the Dublin artist's most complete and mature album.
28/11/2025
Antonio Santini for SANREMO.FM
