Gemma Hayes – Blind Faith – Album Review
by Killian Laher

Gemma Hayes retreated into family life for several years but is back with her first album in ten years.  It starts with the muted Eye for an Eye, slow, steadily picked guitar and the merest hint of keyboard, giving the track a kind of early morning, just waking up feeling.  Like a lot of the album, it is Gemma Hayes at her most stripped down, reminiscent of her 4.35am EP.  Central Hotel starts with fairly muted strumming before a fuller wall of sound with gauzy guitars.  The picked guitars quicken on Another Lover and Hayes is joined by Paul Noonan of BellX1 on vocals, with icy piano rounding out the sound.  The poppier Hardwired is more fleshed out than what went before, but still not an overly busy track, and there are more backing vocals from Noonan.

Feed the Flames has a nocturnal feel and a downright gorgeous chorus.  There are some 80s-style keyboards beloved of the likes of The War On Drugs thrown in for good measure, and the muted High and Low follows in a similar vein.  The Break Didn’t Heal Right has a fuller sound, getting almost rocky towards the end.

A change of track for the trad-sounding Can’t Kill A Hunger, which underlines this by adding a fiddle towards the end.  The final track Return of the Daughters features some bells and is underpinned by a Mazzy Star-style drone, framing Hayes’ voice perfectly.

Probably one of Gemma Hayes’ quietest albums, it is something of a return to form.  It’s as good a collection of songs as she’s released in quite a while, and there’s a general… warmth about the album.

Hardwired