‘A Kind of Dreaming’, the debut album from husband-and-wife duo Driven Snow, is a short album about love; a brave and intimate look at the complexities of making a relationship work for the long haul.

Kieran McGuinness and Emily Aylmer spent their rock’n’roll youth as part of two vastly different fixtures in the Irish music pantheon, namely, Delorentos and Republic of Loose.  Well, they do say opposites attract. While marriage and children may have usurped their rock‘n’roll dreams with the practicalities of everyday life, it certainly couldn’t dull their creative itch.

They say write about what you know and, thankfully, ‘A Kind Of Dreaming’ finds the duo at the kitchen sink feeding three kids and awake in the middle of the night pondering how each would be lost without the other rather than trying to reinvent themselves as Fontaines D.C. or NewDad, getting wrecked in Whelan’s on a Saturday night.

The totality of the album’s nine tracks paints a picture of a couple who are still madly in love with each other, both clearly amazed that the other is still willing to put up with their bullshit and equally willing to put in the work to keep their relationship a going concern.

And what a wonderful surprise it is to witness two people share their fears, hopes, dreams and appreciation so openly with each other in song. This isn’t the mushy, wistful end of love, and ‘A Kind of Dreaming’ is all the better for it. In the age of TikTok, it’s a novelty to see two people appreciate that there’s nothing as hard as love.