Vinyl Record

Adrian Crowley & Matthew Nolan - Pomes Penyeach

Adrian Crowley & Matthew Nolan - Pomes Penyeach on LP vinyl. A 2025 Irish record available from Kilmorna Collection in Listowel, Ireland.

LP · 2025 · Claddagh Records

Available from Kilmorna Collection in Listowel.

Buyer notes: 2025 LP on Claddagh Records, currently available from the Kilmorna Collection vinyl shelf. Pay for pickup in Listowel or ship within Ireland for EUR 5.50.

Pomes Penyeach is Adrian Crowley and Matthew Nolan entering James Joyce through song rather than literary display. Released in 2025, the project draws on Joyce's 1927 collection of thirteen poems and treats those texts as living material: fragile, odd, musical and open to atmosphere. The result is not a conventional singer-songwriter album and not a spoken-word archive. It is a careful act of translation from page to sound. Crowley's voice gives the record its human gravity, carrying the poems with a low, weathered patience that suits Joyce's mixture of intimacy and distance. Nolan's musical settings bring shadow, space and quiet drama, allowing the words to feel newly suspended rather than merely illustrated. What could have become academic becomes strangely tactile: poetry as breath, room tone, melody and restraint.

The album matters because it gives Irish literary memory a contemporary musical body without turning Joyce into a museum object. Instead of treating the poems as untouchable texts, Crowley and Nolan let them behave like songs: uncertain, haunted, repeatable and emotionally available. For a collection, it also widens what a vinyl record can do inside an Irish shelf. This is not only folk, not only poetry, not only art music. It is a conversation between literary history and present-tense performance, which makes it especially valuable in a collection connected to Irish culture.

A strong choice for collectors interested in Irish writing, contemporary songcraft and records that sit between literature and music. It belongs beside spoken-word-adjacent projects, modern Irish folk experiments and albums where atmosphere matters as much as arrangement. On vinyl, Pomes Penyeach benefits from the ritual of listening. The poems need time, and the format gives them that time. It is a record for quiet rooms, careful listeners and shelves that want Irishness to mean more than familiar pub repertoire.

Literary chamber-song with Irish vocal gravity, restrained arrangements, poetic atmosphere and a quiet nocturnal mood.

Recommended for: Adrian Crowley & Matthew Nolan collectors; Listeners building a researched vinyl shelf; Collectors interested in Irish literary music projects; Gift buyers choosing a record with a clear story; Browsers comparing related records and catalogue eras.

What is Pomes Penyeach based on? It is based on James Joyce's 1927 poetry collection of the same name. What kind of record is it? It is a contemporary musical setting of Joyce's poems, sitting between song, literature and atmospheric chamber performance. Who should collect it? Listeners interested in Irish literature, modern Irish music and vinyl projects with a strong conceptual frame.