Disregarding much of the spontaneity or youthful abandon of many debut albums, its mastermind Dubliner Simon Kenny instead crafted a multi-faceted album that blended lingering vocals with ideas of alienation and technology, backed by a mesmerising palate of guitar and electronics.

While each moniker has indicated a change in musical direction, Si doesn’t see it as the core reason. “The change in name reflects my intentions rather than any stylistic conceits. I’m happy using my name now that I’m wring songs and singing them; I think people make a connection with an individual personality, however much of an artifice that might be, and that matters to me. Since what I’m doing now is written and recorded largely on my own, it reflects my public and private concerns, and I’m glad to be identified with those, for better or worse.”

Those aforementioned concerns broadly looked at the rapid transformation of Dublin. You get the feeling this is something Kenny has been asked about time and time again.

“To be honest, as a theme it was a far-from-literal one,” he says. “I got the sense that the album had the weight of being in Dublin and observing the struggles people I knew and didn’t know were enduring, albeit from a distance, and how unsympathetic the city seemed to be to those struggles. The sad part is that the more social and political concerns I was reacting to remain unchanged; if anything, they’ve become more entrenched. We’ve had an election since then which seems to have compounded the negative aspects of Irish society. But I’m very aware of not making ‘Coping Mechanisms II’. The new record is informed by simultaneously much more universal and personal issues.”

Much time spent labouring over layers and layers with co-producer Jimmy Eadie meant that about 30 days were spent in studio over a six-month period for ‘Coping Mechanisms’. “I always knew it was going to end, and that it was going to be successful artistically. So it wasn’t an excessively difficult experience,” adds Si.

A sincerely beautiful record that dipped into various genres, and perhaps tipped its hat at influences as disparate as Mouse on Mars, Yo La Tengo, minimalist composers, jazz and folk, ‘Coping Mechanisms’ was, while trying to avoid any clichés, an album of its own.