BRIARS and their new single, "Words," is everything you think the title should mean, but so much more.
Written by Mick Grace and Paul O'Shea, the dream team at the centre of Hurdles' "Words," this slow-burning, emotionally astute offering marries the age-old storytelling techniques of Irish folk with the immediacy of modern indie. There's a comfortable warmth from the opening strum, the sense you're being let in on something personal, carefully weighed. But BRIARS aren't simply playing to memories. They're pushing the sound into daring new territory. "Words" opens with a gentle whisper of intimacy, volition-filled acoustic weave, tender harmonies, and a vocal tone that skirts the thin edge between confession and conviction. The lyrics are poetic, spare, and so few that each one feels dizzyingly, heart-stoppingly needed a copy of the song's title translated into a statement about language's power and frailty. It's not that you listen to "Words," you sit with it.
The song suddenly erupts into something entirely unexpected and richly satisfying, an indie-traditionalist crescendo that arrives with grace and authority. Strings glisten, rhythms cinch up, and there, in a flash, is the track breathing with new lungs fierce, proud, stubbornly Irish. It's the sound of a group that understands precisely who and what they are and who they want to be.
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