So if, as Cranmer says, nature abhors a vacuum, where does that leave us? Well, nowhere in particular to be honest. Cork, being about the only place in the world pig-headed to try to refute Cranmer's declaration ("Fuck Dublin and its laws of thermodynamics") has been happy host to an enormous musical vacuum for some time now. Already I see the voices start to rise in protest. Look, it's simple: Any place whose most significant musical export of the last ten years has been 'After All' by The Frank and Jesus Walters has a bit of thinking to do. But then, as Roy Keane or Michael Collins will tell you, sheer Cork thickness will only get you so far. Everything, eventually, has to give, and no place can go on in a vacuum forever. Not even Cork. Somehow, someone or something, eventually has to fill the space. And so Boa Morte, shuffle blindly with a slow, relentless inevitability into the light.
It's been a long time coming.
Veterans all, of many a local guitar band, Boa Morte were picked up, after the ignominious collapse of earlier deal, by Francis MacDonald of Teenage Fanclub fame who decided to put the album out on his own prestigious Shoeshine imprint. So, is this the record to end our vacuum, restore the earth to rights, realign the cosmic whatnot and set The European City of culture 2005 on its deserved path to fame and glory?
Well, maybe. But if the rest of the world are going to air their cupboards with spiky teen punk-pop,well then we have to do it differenetly. Boa Morte, coming burdened with a high level of expectation, and no small amount of pressure from their home town, have produced one of the most relaxed, warm and inviting Irish records for some time.
'Soon it will come time to face the world outside' says the title. Okay, says the music, just not yet.

And so the opening notes of 'Clarence White' have a wonderfully seductive, almost womb-like calm and sense of reassurance. As a song, it's a country pub on a summer's night, invites the listener in, puts on the pints and heats up the yoke for the toasted sandwiches. "You gift us, with you," goes the refrain over a Smog-like slow-burner that builds to a small, restrained kind of glory.
The alt-country/Americana influences are all over the record like faded stickers on a hippy's guitar. The haunted fragility of Will Oldham ekes out of 'Maginot line' while hints of the aforementioned Smog, clearly the band's greatest influence, are all over songs like the wonderful 'Unfortunate Leader.' Even the slightly less obvious Jim O'Rourke can be heard on occassion, particularly on the slightly jauntier, off-kilter 'Snowbound again.'
Yet it's the atmosphere captured on the album, that strikes the listener as much as the music. The simple, clear arrangements, the almost afterthought guitars and melodies and above all, the faint, crackly vocal of co-singer Paul Ruxton all combine to create a uniquely warm and hushed ambience, almost reverential in its sparsity.
Ruxton has been gifted with a voice that sounds like it might break at any second, as if he's just holding back his emotion until each song is over while the other singer, bassist Cormac Gahan sings in a beautifully strange, slow, almost-speaking baritone. Sure, neither can sing, but in that way Stephen Malkmus and Nico or even the Bonnie Prince himself can't sing, that whatever their technical shortcomings, you can't imagine their music without Ruxton's distinctive, breaking, vulnerablity or Gahan's lilting rumble that makes each song sound like he's telling a bedtime story to a weird, over-emotional child.
The album is littered with high-points, from 'December's wistful cello to 'Burn's lilting one-word chorus that almost sounds like something Travis might have written if they had talent. It's one moment of true, unquestionable greatness though, is the dizzy, lovelorn waltz of 'Tonight she said.' "We might as well try to make use of the time and put out the light, cos we've got tonight," sings Cormac Gahan over a gorgeous, elegiac string arrangement, whose calm, fraternal embrace is what tilts the song merely from good to great, and gives the the album it's one small moment of undeniable brilliance. It's full of wonderful, nostalgic lines as well, lines that the even the bould Smog would be proud of - "Remember the hand that shields the light from the sun and harvest moon/Remember a face so bright, that fireflies swarmed into the room."
Beautifully, lovingly put together, with the natural sound that's behoven by these songs, some of whom sound like they were plucked from a tree on an organic song-farm somewhere in West Cork, "Soon it will come time to face the world outside" is, finally, a Cork record worthy of the name. So is it the album we were waiting for? Nope, this is the album we didn't know we were waiting for. The rest of the world can have their vines and their hives and their strokes, this downbeat gem will suit us just fine. Boa Morte on their debut have crafted a uniquely loveable, deeply personal and at times, very moving record, one that can only point to a very bright future indeed. The waiting is over. Cork, at last, breathes again.