Irish singer-songwriter Alan Doyle was in Spain when he finished work on his debut LP Places in 2009. It's a very personal record in every sense, intimately written, performed and produced by Alan himself. To compensate for lack of experience as a recording artist, he keeps the arrangements simple, his voice is accompanied by just one or two acoustic guitars, bass, drums, and some sparse backing vocals, and as a result the music feels minimal, but also gains a certain warmth. What Alan lacks in experience as a recording artist however, he more than makes up for with his songwriting ability. The album's centerpiece Veracruz is an instant classic, in which dreams are always just beyond the horizon, while in Writers & Philosophers and Lay Me in the Ground, we're taken to the darker places of love and hurt, and left questioning our very identities. In the chilling Don't Shoot, we catch a glimpse of the violence of transitions, both inner and literal, through Che Guevara's first execution and how it changed him from idealistic doctor to hardened revolutionary. The bareness of this album's instrumentation leaves room for the lyrics to breathe, and for its ten beautifully crafted songs to take centre stage.