When asked to write about a song from the west of Ireland there was no doubt that my choice would be sourced from Maija Sofia’s Bath Time, surely one of the most important voices in Irish music. I fell into this album weightlessly, like sinking beneath a bed of water, sheathed by that blissful, deafening silence, a gleeful drowning. The song I have chosen is Cobweb, one I feel may be a hidden gem on the album.
“She carries around the light of the moon in the curve of her spine and a runcible spoon.”
I am besotted with the beguiling, unpolished electric guitar chords that carry her glossy, delicate vocals through this piece of music, a delicacy that is not to be mistaken for tenuousness. It is the formidable poise behind her words that strikes me most about this incredible artist. The use of traditional instrumentation and unassuming sound fixtures are elemental throughout this album. In Cobweb, the haunting, droning feedback that swoops in triggers an unrest that is both necessary and conducive in experiencing Sofia’s raw, heartfelt, stirring, intellectually and poetically dense, lyrical soundscape in its full form. One experiences the violent murmur as a kind of ‘listen up, hear me, feel this and pay attention’. Maija Sofia is a song-writer deserving of immense glorification.
