Aoife O'Donovan - In the Magic Hour

Aoife O'Donovan's debut solo album, Fossils, was released to critical acclaim and ended up on many Best of 2013 lists from outlets like NPR Music, American Songwriter, New York Magazine and No Depression, among others.

Aoife appeared on A Prairie Home Companion, NPR's Weekend Edition, SiriusXM The Coffee House and The Village. President Obama even exposed himself as a fan by including the track Red and White and Blue and Gold on his first official Spotify playlist in the summer of 2015. Since it's release, Fossils has sold more than 22, 000 copies worldwide, and Aoife is poised to break through with her new album, In The Magic Hour.

The songwriting process for In The Magic Hour coincided with the death of Aoife's grandfather, at age 93. She remembers him as a gentle soul in the small Irish village of Clonakilty where he lived. The lyrics on In the Magic Hour are infused with a sense of loss and mortality's dark certainty. But the album is just as much an ode to Aoife's joyful childhood visits to Ireland. Aunts, uncles, grandparents and flocks of cousins would gather at the Clonakilty seaside to swim in the chilly ocean and sing together in the lingering Irish summer twilight. Aoife had not yet performed many of the songs live before arranging and recording them over the course of three sessions in Tucker Martine's (The Decemberists, Neko Case), studio in Portland, OR.

The whole recording process was really Tucker [Martine] and me taking these songs and building them from the ground up, Aoife says. The result is deliberate but not over-done, the freshness of the material intact. While In The Magic Hour rekindles the creative partnership with Grammy-nominated producer Martine, the album also highlights the fruits of Aoife's various career collaborations. Composer Gabriel Kahane, New York's string quartet Brooklyn Rider and musician Chris Thile all lend musical and vocal support, as well as I'm With Her band members Sara Watkins and Sarah Jarosz, plus many more.