Release Date: 31 October 2025
Song Count: 7
Rating: 9.2/10
Description:
In order to find some more niche and out-there album recommendations without having to browse through random Reddit threads or pester my friends for them for the millionth time, I finally went ahead and made myself a Bandcamp account, and the album of today was one of the first ones that struck my eye after I saw it on a headlining post. A brand new release (only two days ago as of writing this), Night CRIÚ is Hilary Woods' fourth solo album since departing from the Irish alternative rock band JJ72, and has been in the making for two years straight, comprised of a small yet rich sample of songs recorded by her over the course of that time.
Hilary Woods' works of music are ones that are, above else, one of a kind and experimental to the point of morphing into a form of verbal indescription for listeners, and Night CRIÚ firmly falls within that self-pioneered category. Each and every track is swept into waves of melancholy, serenity and eeriness all at once; creating a breathtaking athmosphere that, even with the abundance of musical repetition, holds the listener's engagement and mesmerises them with its musical ambience. It achieves this almost supernatural feat without packing in a large or bountiful amount of sounds at all or biting off more than it can chew, instead treading every single musical and narrative step it takes slowly and meticulously, and yet keeping a steady and firm pace. When it hits, it doesn't hold back one bit, but it simultaneously feels like a completely natural and intended progression of what came mere milliseconds before.
A divine blend of elements and forces come into play throughout this piece of art; the polyphonic, soft alto vocals of Woods provide an ethereal and dream-like effect, the sounds of choirs from both young and old give the slow, sorrowful songs an even more haunting feel to them, the woodwind and string instruments wave along like gusts of wind and periodically build up intense yet also borderline effortless moments of tension, theatrics, drama and tragedy before releasing them, sonically turning the tracks into living and breathing entities in of themselves, and to provide icing on top of the masterfully crafted cake, the low and weighted sounds of the percussion act as leaping points holding everything else together and lull one straight into the invoked atmosphere. A fitting analogy I've found to listening to Night CRIÚ is as if one was in a large, empty ballroom with all of the lights out in the middle of the night, the moonlight shining into the windows and slow music quietly playing in the distance by some unknown force, in spite of there not being a single person where the instruments are meant to be.
Highlighting any particular songs as the cream-of-the-crop best of the best proves itself especially difficult for me this time around, though the tracks "Endgames" with its chilling cello sound paving the way, "Offerings" with its mental imagery of looking into a window in the middle of the rain to an enchanting ritual being performed in a dark room of an old building with pristine architecture, and the closing track "Shelter" with its final bouts of build-ups akin to the aforementioned sense of musical breathing before its final slow, gentle fade-out into silence lend themselves the best to verbalisations that accurately describe what struck out to me whilst listening. No track here is in any way worse or of lesser quality than another, however, as everything that strikes you from the moment you begin listening to it remains throughout the entire runtime - what you hear is what you get, as one could say.
A truly hypnotic and incredible experience on every front. Would absolutely recommend Night CRIÚ to those interested in trying this truly irreplaceable work of artistry out for themselves.