All The Luck In The World - How The Ash Felt
Berlin-based Irish trio look to expand their sonic and emotional range with their ambitious third album
How The Ash Felt album bio:
Encompassing several years of work, writing in multiple countries, and a pandemic that kept them separated for long periods, All The Luck In The World’s third album How The Ash Felt is the culmination of a period of reckoning, upheaval and dedication from the three young Irishmen Neil Foot, Ben Connolly and Kelvin Barr. Their commitment and sacrifice has paid off, as they have refined their singular blend of alt-folk and art-rock flourishes into the most complete, compelling and affecting release of their career to date.
In the course of How The Ash Felt we hear dispatches from New York City, the West Coast of France, the East Coast of Ireland and their now-home of Berlin – but no matter where they go, All The Luck In The World can’t escape their ghosts. Whether they appear in the form of grief, heartbreak, feelings of insignificance or downright anger, the trio are unafraid to face up to these feelings and deal with them the best way they know how: sing them out into gorgeously homespun musical tales. While these songs are not directly about the last year of lockdown, the themes of loss, isolation, and insecurity beautifully harmonise with those felt by people all around the globe – and, through their graceful composition, they have the subtle power to rebuild hope and optimism in all of us.
All The Luck In The World’s alchemical ability of spinning life’s struggles into gratifying musical lessons resound throughout How The Ash Felt. It begins with album opener “Five Feathers”, a song named after a cowboy hat that Neil remembers his dad wearing on holidays in his youth. From this image, the trio spiral out in rich harmonies as they explore memories from Neil’s childhood holidays spent on the French coast, with the blinding bright sun audible in their loving melodies and the burbling of the tides audible in the electronic undercurrent. It’s a triumphant reminiscence, and the perfect way to welcome listeners to the complex emotional spectrum of How The Ash Felt.
Throughout, All The Luck In The World continually question what it means to be human. “Patterns” is a diary of a sleepless night where they cleverly implement instrumental loops to animate the cycles of life, which pairs perfectly with the poetic accounts of “folding patterns in between recurring memories.” All The Luck In The World display their abilities at matching mood to topic, with “Patterns” slowly building into a hypnotising tangle of loops that mirrors the singer’s restless mental state.
The core of the album is centred on two more tracks of remembrance. “Talons” was written in Kilmuckridge on Ireland’s South East Coast, a place Neil’s mother spent many happy times in her childhood. All The Luck In The World conjure elemental magic as they cast their minds back, lamenting “this time last year you were here beside me”, the regret in their words tinged with strength in solidarity as their voices combine to “soak in the sea air.” This open-hearted memorialising bleeds into the next track, “Rue de L’Enfer”, where glittering electronics and silken strings set the scene for Neil to take us back to the French coast with his family, this time on a more emotionally-charged day where there are “memories unpaved and sorrows yet to fade.”
Their awe at the world’s grandiosity is another key theme of How The Ash Felt. “Only Avenues” is a song set in NYC where the rumbling of an underground car sends Neil on a thought trail about the expansiveness of the Big Apple and his smallness within it, noting the light pollution with the poetically picked phrase “that overarching incandescent problem.” “Waves Poem'' started life as verses in Ben’s notebook, written on Ireland’s South Coast as he watched the crashing tides day after day; “waves can sing / they tell me things I can’t ignore,” he offers from deep within this blissful dream. Awed by the power of nature and noting his insignificance among the wild world, you can hear him reach a place of acceptance as the band crafts a soundscape that places us right next to him on that windswept shore.
Throughout the album, All The Luck In The World have no trouble sweeping us away with their sonic sightseeing and far-reaching emotionality. Listening to these grand and imaginative songs, it’s easy to be transported to elegiac shores and forget that behind it are simply three old friends and musical allies. This is brought to the fore on How The Ash Felt’s closing track, “I’ve Been Trying”, which eschews studio wizardry and begins with an organic phone recording of the band playing the song together in a room – “a crucial part of what the band really is,” as Ben describes it. The song’s words find them once more admitting their shortcomings, and they finish the album with the lines “I’ve been trying to make the right decisions / between the humming and hawing.” It’s a mortal admission that cuts to the core of what All The Luck In The World is: three young men just trying to make their way through this confounding world. These kinds of sentiments are why they are a band to be cherished, and with How The Ash Felt we feel closer to them than ever.
Artist bio:
All The Luck In The World is the meeting of Neil Foot, Ben Connolly and Kelvin Barr, three Irish songwriters and multi-instrumentalists now based in Berlin. While they’ve already racked up tens of millions of streams and countless headline dates around Europe, the trio are still growing in artistic stature, with more purpose, detail and acute emotionality injected into each of their new songs.
In the artistic hub of the German capital, they have found an equanimity and a way of life that has allowed them to spend more time investing themselves in their passion and learning more about each other, musically and personally. While they have known each other and been playing together since school and college days, this new level of closeness and understanding has pushed them to create a new album that combines their most expansive compositions with their most deeply personal poetry. “We’re at the stage where we all understand each other’s perspectives so much that we can write as one,” Ben says, a fact that is undeniable in listening to the seamlessly symbiotic stories and sounds in their new material.
Their youths spent growing up in the Irish countryside still bear significant influence on their lyrical themes, which encompass poetic examinations of the natural world and humble acknowledgements of their insignificance in the grandiosity of existence. All three members were introduced to music at an early age, and brought up on traditional sounds and styles, with Neil fondly remembering his father organising country gigs at their local village pub. While the music that All The Luck In The World make is more modern and forward-thinking, those hallmarks are still detectable in their palette.
Their third album, How The Ash Felt, has been stewing for years as they carefully and lovingly pieced together the tender elements of each song. It finds All The Luck In The World remaining ensconced in their sound, which sits in a secret garden between alternative-folk and art-rock, but decorating it with finer details, bolder arrangements, subtle electronic expansions and braver lyricism. Having built up an arsenal of over 20 new tracks, they’ve whittled them down to the finest 10 examples of their songcraft they’ve yet released. These are songs that can speak straight to the heart in private moments, but just as easily stir an audience to sing along in full-throated catharsis when they take their renowned live show on the road again.
With their tails up and the wind at their backs, All The Luck In The World are ready to release their new songs to an unsuspecting world who are ready to be roused. With How The Ash Felt they are on a mission to make up for lost time and bring people together in a union of heartfelt and human feeling.
