As with all the best stories, fate played a part in the way Stephen Macartney’s debut solo album came about. When a group of American musicians stumbled by chance into the session that the self-confessed “hopeful misanthrope” hosts in a Bangor bar a few years ago, it ultimately led the Co Down musician to record his debut album as King Cedar in Los Angeles.

Macartney has previous form with the gallant Northern Irish alt-folk band Farriers, but these songs, their timeworn hue distinctly coloured by the sun-dappled Californian production (courtesy of the jazz bassist and producer Andre de Santanna) and a 1970s fuzz, are on another level entirely. Put Down the Gun, Leroy and X Number Years blend Father John Misty’s arch lyric sheet (“Let’s find another bar to dive in / Let’s find another archetype to lie in”) with the laconic folk/alt-country style heard on Ryan Adams’s early material.

Macartney’s voice is alluring throughout, its soft rasp particularly beguiling on the soft acoustic quiver of All the Colours I Can Know, while the evocative shimmer of Holding Out for California and the brassy rollick of the album’s closing track, Everything, More, add some welcome dashes of melodrama. Brazenly coloured by its influences and perhaps a little lacking in innovation when it comes to the comparatively methodical slog of the quieter numbers, this is hugely enjoyable stuff, nevertheless.