Ian Roland Traced Craving Back to A Childhood Park in Bromley

The Crystal Palace Dinosaurs, A Five Piece Band and A Brighton Studio

Ian Roland released Craving on 28 February 2025. He recorded it at Brighton Road Recording Studios with Jake Skinner producing, and five players are on it. The song itself starts somewhere much older than the session.

Ian Roland’s music is in the playlist below, and his full run of coverage is collected on the Ian Roland profile. Craving reached this desk through PopHits.Co Music Charts, which verifies independent artists and places their releases across its network of music news titles. Press play, then stay with the piece.

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Where Ian Roland Started The Song And What It Is Actually About

Roland is based in Brighton, but Craving looks back to the Borough of Bromley. The writing draws on childhood trips to Crystal Palace Park with his older sisters, to find the Victorian model dinosaurs among the trees.

He has described that memory plainly, and the description explains the mood of the record better than any genre tag does:

“I knew the park as Crystal Park, a magical park, and it features in this song, which is about the enduring power of love that can sometimes haunt us, like a toxic drug, but also sustain and uplift us, if we give it enough space.”

That is a specific place attached to a general feeling, and it is why the lyric avoids the usual shapes. The park is not a metaphor he reached for afterwards. It is where the song began, and the writing keeps returning to the same grey sky and the same trees.

The result is a song about love that never states its case directly. It circles, which is what the arrangement then has to support.

What He Grew Up Listening To And Where That Shows

Roland’s listening history sits close to the surface of the writing. He came up on The Beatles and The Kinks through his older sisters, then Cat Stevens, and later The Waterboys. Those are all writers who put the song first and let the arrangement serve it.

The genre labels on this release are Acoustic, Alt-Country and Alt-Folk, and each is doing some work. The guitar and the vocal are folk. The pacing, and the space left around the drums, lean country. The willingness to hand a melodic lead to a string part is the alt element, and it is why the track will not settle neatly into any one of the three.

The comparisons that fit are modern-vintage ones. There is Paul Simon in the way the melody sits against the guitar rather than riding on top of it. There is something of The National in the low, unhurried vocal register and the refusal to raise it for effect. Anyone who follows Elbow for the patient build will recognise the pacing here too.

Who Played On Craving And What Each Part Does

The credits are worth reading, because this is an arrangement record rather than a solo one.

• Ian Roland, vocals and guitar
• Simon Yapp, violin and viola
• Mishkin Fitzgerald, piano and keyboards
• Dave Coomber, bass
• James Chapman, drums

Yapp is the long-standing partner in this work. He arranged and produced the album The Wood Wide Web alongside Roland and gigs with him, so the string parts are not a late overdub. They come from someone who knows the catalogue.

The strings and the piano take different jobs, and that division is what makes the track work. Violin and viola carry the line that would otherwise want a second voice. The piano holds the harmony underneath, which frees the guitar to stay percussive. Bass and drums sit low and keep time without pushing the tempo.

Jake Skinner produced the session and Bob Macciochi mastered it. The mix has air in it, so the individual players stay audible instead of massing into one acoustic wall.

Obscure Sound reviewed the single in March 2025 and heard lush introspection and cathartic emotion in its folk sound, which is a fair account of what the arrangement is doing.

MusicRoots.News curator team: “The reason this one holds is that the violin is treated as a writer’s instrument, not a decoration. Give a string part an actual line to play and the singer can stop working so hard, which is exactly the trade Roland makes here.”

So it suits listeners who want acoustic writing with the players audible, and who are happy for a violin to take the lead. It gives more back on a second pass, because the parts stay separate enough to follow one at a time.

Where To Hear Craving And Follow Ian Roland

Craving is on Spotify, and it has its own Bandcamp page. His wider catalogue, including the earlier Virtually Free, sits there too, and the albums are on Tidal.

He posts on Instagram, X and Facebook, keeps video on his YouTube channel, and collects it all on his official site.

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