Wicklow trio All The Luck In The World (19 year olds Neil Foot, Ben Connolly and Kelvin Barr) have recorded on this, their self-titled debut album, a document that reflects the places that helped to conceive it. The ten tracks on offer here encapsulate the grand, metropolitan clarity of Berlin, where the majority of the time recording the album was spent (with frequent Duke Special collaborator Paul Pilot at the helm), the quaint nature that a Belgian abbey village named Denée – where procedings began -would suggest; and the warmth and comfort of the living room where the songs were first birthed and were never truly intended to leave.

In this sense, ‘All The Luck In The World’ is an intimate affair that blends the contemporary folk tinged alternative rock sound that the band have crafted with sophisticated extras – a horn section here, a string section there, synths, vibes and ambience in other places. Their age and modest place of origin not withstanding, All The Luck In The World prove themselves very capable musicians and arrangers. While the same instrumentation is used throughout, the techniques used to convey certain emotions are plentiful. Arpeggiated, harmonised acoustic guitar parts give way to electro-acoustic counterpoints on tracks Low Beams and Your Fires. On Haven, the band’s sense of dynamics is on full show as the embellished string sections that build to a crescendo only to give way to stark, fragile acoustics again. There are a hoard of treats for nitpicking music obsessives; interlocking guitar leads on Dark Eyes, a kick-drum/hand-clap percussion laying the foundation for the oddly timed Away that reappears in the track’s gorgeous string-lead mid-section that also reintroduces the horns.

Lyrically, everything is laid just as bare. The lines provided range from the thought provoking (“All you have to do in life is die/Everything else is a choice” (Conquer) and “You’ve never seen your mother look younger than you” (Dark Eyes)) to the confessional (“I said that I’d stay up all night/But you got drunk and I got tired” on Your Fires), and a wealth of clever wordplay and metaphor (“When we tied our knots we left loose ends”, Knots).

‘All The Luck In The World’ is an engaging and cohesive listen. The songs flow seamlessly, drawing the listener in emotionally and mentally. The songs carry that sort of sentimental familiarity that you’d swear you’d played them before, alone in your bedroom are so grand that they’d easily fill an auditorium and leave everybody present hanging on every note and syllable. It’s an album that doesn’t aim to please anybody but those who made it, and yet manages to please.