Irish singer Adrian Crowley’s 2021 album ‘The Watchful Eye Of The Stars’ features magical and surreal songs that inspire the imagination. The music and lyrics make the listener look at the world in a different, more intense way and show how meaningful it is. They also exude a tenderness that is a great comfort in times of polarization and social isolation.

Birds appear frequently in Crowley’s work. There is, for example, the comforting Little Bird of Sunshine from ‘A Shut-in’s Lament’.

Little bird of sunshine
I watch you on my window sill
Rescued from my nighttime
My visitor, my newfound friend
Little bit of golden, straight out of the blue
I wait for you to sing your sunny song
(From: ‘A Shut-in’s Lament’)

Black Crow

But the most appealing bird on ‘The Watchful Eye Of The Stars’ is the black crow of the almost hymnal ‘Crow Song’. It happened when he was young. One stormy night in Ireland, Adrian Crowley’s brother brought home an injured crow. After tending to it for a while, the crow flew away on its own, leaving a deep impression. Crowley wrote a story about it, which later became ‘Crow Song’. The black bird is often associated with death. But Adrian Crowley wrote a song about life, about getting a second chance, even if it ends with the death of the crow.

It was late October the next time I saw you
I was walking along the top of the fence

When I looked down and I saw the cluster of bones and black feathers
That lay among the rusty bracken
Solitary Crow with a cripple wing
And I looked to the sky
(From: ‘Crow Song’)

‘Crow Song’ is not a morbid song. Certainly not. Think of it as a metaphor for a gift that life gives you, that you are not sure how to handle, but that it is up to you to do your best to take care of it.

Adrian Crowley – The Watchful Eye Of The Stars

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