The Juliana Field is Rob Smith’s sophomore album and sees the Dublin based musician return to basics. The stripped back productions throughout the album shows Smith as an artist happy in his own skin.
The first track on the album is recent single Way Back Home, a catchy earworm of a song that will get in your head and stay there. Memorable hooks and hand claps do the trick nicely, thank you. The Stomp Song lives up to its reputation with a driving beat and bass line. Production wise on this track, everything is given room to breathe, however I think the track may have benefited from the vocals being a little higher in the mix.
It’s not too surprising that other places seem to feature in Smith’s music. After all, he’s one of the few Irish singer-songwriters who seem to play more outside Ireland than in it. Marrakesh is a interesting instrumental piece building up with guitar and percussion. Really like this, if Smith can produce more of this maybe he should go into soundtrack work. Rue Saint Dominique is a tender song with nice guitar style. It shows that Smith is really a big teddy bear, but shhh! Don’t tell anyone.
