After delving into their Newry childhood on Sugar Island, their 2016 album, Brendan and Declan Murphy are not quite ready to leave the past behind. That said, the 10th 4 of Us album came to fruition in a thoroughly modern manner: the duo’s weekly live-streams, which kicked off during the pandemic, have provided fans with a glimpse into their creative process as well as helping to guide the brothers to shape Crescent Nights via their feedback.
About 170 online shows later, the fruit of their labour is as well-crafted and evocative as anything they’ve done before. Having flirted with the big time and enjoyed mainstream success in the early part of their career (their debut album, Songs for the Tempted, is 35 years old this year), Crescent Nights opens with a return to their childhood during the Troubles on the fictional estate of St Gabriel’s Drive, where “brothers plot as their mother cries” and get drawn deeper into a cycle of violence and hatred.
Brendan Murphy, who writes the lyrics, proves his worth as a storyteller on the acoustic judder of Murphy’s Place, a sentimental recollection of their father’s betting shop, where they worked as teenagers and where “fingers of nicotine search for another score”. The title track, with its warm production and lilting folk-pop groove, harks back to hazy nights “sipping snakebite”.
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This is not merely an exercise in nostalgia, though. Murphy lays himself bare on the confessional, sombre Hurt People, while other songs pay tribute to loved ones. Carry Me to the Water is a tender tribute to their father and how, amid “bomb scares, flaming cars / Your curfew was martial law”, while the reflective strum of Tree of Life is underpinned by a robust sense of wistfulness.
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Dotted among the reminiscences are also a smattering of love songs, most notably I Know You Know (Me So Well) and the album’s closing track, Miracle Every Morning, a delicately plucked affair with lyrics that might be corny (“Waking up looking at you is like I’m waking up to a new miracle every morning”) if they weren’t so earnestly sung.
