The Road

Opening majestically, and with a fuller production than the demo version, The Road displays Ed’s voice is at its best and purest. He sounds like a freebird, a freedom fighter – a cross between the Americana folk of Lynyrd Skynyrd or Crosby, Stills and Nash, and an Irish original.

The middle eight goes decidedly rockier – a direction that I wasn’t entirely convinced of, but Ed does pull it off; confessing his first love of rock bands such as Alice in Chains and Nirvana.

A big drum smacking lead-in breaks us back into the tree-fluttering background melody while Ed’s voice implores ‘small folk like me are reminders of all that’s free’ and it all makes sense. In fact this song is so alarmingly accomplished that you wonder why it isn’t already in your record collection.

It’s not a rock song, it’s not a folk song, and it certainly isn’t a pop song. It’s a track that defies a pigeonhole, as all of Ed Tierney’s music. This is why he deserves parallels with some of the best songwriters working in Europe – if not across the Atlantic – at the moment. It’s this innate ability for melody, lyric and production sans cliché that really impresses me about Ed.