Fionn Regan keeps marching on to the beat of his own drum. The Irish troubadour, backed by the producer David Grenshaw, has released a 6th studio album: Cala, from the Spanish for “creek”. These 10 indie folk tracks, totaling in at 34 minutes, paint a dreamlike landscape bathed in the light of atmospheric effects and electronic noises. Regan uses his bewitching fingerpicking on tracks like Volca, or reverse piano on others (Glacier), to craft unique textures that heighten the intimacy in his songwriting. Cala is a solo album in every sense: his artistic identity as a musician and a poet reflects such maturity that any production is just finishing touches. “Poet” is worth mentioning: he’s spent years honing his craft traveling across the U.K; topics are diverse, like a travel notebook. A recurring theme is interaction between humans and their environment: over Under the Waves / Tokyo’s magic arpeggios, he sings: « There is a door under the waves / She has the key on a neck chain », as if falling in love was analogous to drowning. Cala ends under the ocean, but Fionn Regan is resourceful: those depths are transformed into a comforting place, where the flow of the distant surface is like a lullaby. ©Alexis Renaudat / Qobuz