Releases > Releases October 2024
Want to see earlier releases? Visit the archive.
HANNAH O’BRIEN & GRANT FLICK
Unmatched Pair
Own Label, 11 Tracks, 47 Minutes
www.obrienflickmusic.com
A meeting of minds, styles and many influences characterises this new recording from O’Brien and Flick. The music here is predominantly new and somewhat experimental, with the majority of the tracks written by Flick whose background is in jazz, bluegrass and other American folk idioms. Hannah O’Brien comes from solid Irish traditional music stock, and she contributes a traditional tune set with a newly composed piece in the same idiom, but more on that later.
Grant Flick also plays the tenor guitar and the Swedish nyckelharpa, which for those new to this kind of music is a keyed fiddle, like a hurdy-gurdy without a wheel.
There are three samples from the album on their Bandcamp page which give a flavour of the imagination and sonic adventures that these two fiddlers have brought to the table. Other tracks include Double Pass, a bluegrass crunch up with the second fiddle playing pizzicato chops and breaking out into sub-melody drones; the piece swings into a double handed repeated riff that builds tension and moves higher in pitch until there’s a final rasping drawn bow in the lower octave. There’s a riff running through the opening half of the title track, busy and repetitive until there is a change in mood with the twin fiddles going in different directions, a taste of Americana, almost old-timey.
Track 8 is the most traditional sounding one on the album, paired by Hannah O’Brien’s composition for her father Andrew O’Brien’s Fiddle (to my ears this paid an unconscious nod to the music of Cape Breton), and John Kelly’s Concertina, fiddle and tenor guitar combining on a gorgeous lyrical tune that wouldn’t be out of place in a Martin Hayes concert. Surely a track for the repeat button.
Diverse backgrounds, varied traditions and a love of experimentation: O’Brien and Flick is a duet of aces and an Unmatched Pair.
Seán Laffey
TARA BREEN, PÁDRAIG RYNNE & JIM MURRAY
Odyssey
Liosbeg Records, 10 Tracks, 41 Minutes
https://padraigrynne.bandcamp.com/album/odyssey
Beautiful music from a hugely talented and very experienced trio, Odyssey is centred on the Clare tradition in Breen’s fiddle and Rynne’s concertina, and also ranges far beyond Ireland to Scotland, Asturias and even Denmark. Nothing here jars with Irish music, but there’s plenty that’s new and innovative. Tara and Pádraig are both noted for attempting the impossible and sometimes the inadvisable, and Jim was no stranger to the stranger side of Kerry culture for many years. The three work together magnificently, leaving space for each other or piling in together for maximum impact. There’s hardly even a need for the touches of keyboards and percussion from guests Evan Powell and Brian Morrisey, a cherry on top of an already generously iced cake.
Interleaved with the finest jigs and reels by the likes of Finbarr Dwyer, Matt Molloy, Josie McDermott, the late Charlie Lennon and other composers lost to memory are some gorgeous slower pieces: The Room is in Darkness by Aidan O’Rourke with a sultry mood which fits its title, the slow dance Palmira by Fernando Largo in a relaxed Spanish style, and Rune Cygan Barslund’s heartwarming waltz Til Mor og Far. There are also new compositions by Rynne and Murray, some in exotic time signatures and others in more familiar rhythms.
Odyssey opens with a punchy take on Lucy Farr’s Music on the Winds and finishes with the equally powerful High 5’s. There’s a lot packed in between, and I haven’t even mentioned the two Joe Liddy reels which are probably my favourite moments on this magical album.
Alex Monaghan
OLIVIA BARRETT
Elsewhere
Own Label, 10 Tracks, 39 Minutes www.oliviabarrettmusic.com
Olivia Barrett is based in British Columbia in West coast Canada. The music here relates to the western fringes of Ireland and Scotland in ten tracks of exceptionally fluid and accomplished fiddling. Olivia with the assistance of guitarist Adam Dobres and harpist Ellen Gibling as well as multi-instrumentalist Adrian Dolan has made a significant mark on Celtic fiddle music.
Some of the titles were new to me, so I initially honed in on Junior Crehan’s as my litmus test and she’s nailed it: accent, tone and tempo, all on the money. Good vibes then to search out the remaining tracks. The harp gives an otherworldly beginning to Last Light, a slow air fecund with melancholy as most slow airs should be. She ventures into the world of Strathspeys on the Miller of Drone, which ends in a bubbling reel as if the sluice has been opened to spin the grinding stones. A piano is present on Night Call/Old Field Road, another slow paced tune, one to give the bodhrán player a breather at your session and one I’d recommend you learn.
By way of a title track I’d suggest the spirit of the album is distilled in The Mountain Blessing/The Secret Elsewhere. Here the ensemble playing is of the highest order, the musical craft work is both filigree and robust, a transition between tunes handled by staccato notes on the harp, a modern yet timeless combination. The album ends with another slow air in the brace of tunes One for Sorrow/Two for Joy. That first slow air is a solo masterclass from Barrett before the ensemble bring the album to a joyful finish with a happy reel.
Digital photographers talk about the dynamic range in their work, the ability of the tech to capture the detail in the shadows and not lose subtlety in the highlights; that metaphor applies to Elsewhere. The light and shade on this album has brought Olivia Barrett’s music into sharp focus. An album for fiddlers everywhere.
Seán Laffey
AERIALISTS
I Lost My Heart on Friday
Fiddlehead Records, 9 Tracks, 43 Minutes
www.aerialistsmusic.com
The Aerialists have been recording and touring for ten years now. Based in Canada, the band is made up of Scottish harpist Màiri Chaimbeul, fiddler Elise Boeur, and guitarist Adam Iredale-Gray. The album also features Robert Alan Mackie on Electric and Upright Bass. They blend Irish, Scottish and Norwegian music into a sound that has been described as “ethereal yet precise, technical yet visceral”.
Their opening track which is also featured on the band’s webpage is called Father Swan Story, a combination of an Estonian Labajalg (a dance that is performed flat-footed) and a French Bourée called Bourée de Porte (there’s a detailed background to both of these tunes on their Bandcamp page). Elise takes this second tune and brings it into a discordant universe, especially when it warps into a prog-rock dimension. How can they follow that, I thought?
They do so with a move into Celtic music and the title track of the album in the selection I Lost My Heart On Friday. It is a mash up of Eddie Kelly’s reel and that title tune, not you might imagine a new composition, it dates from the 1790s Donald Grant collection. Irish melodies are peppered throughout this album: Memories of Anascaul, polkas from Kerry with a French flavour, hear a repeated single note harp intro and a shift to Celtic rock bravado, before they tone it down with the fiddle playing over a harmonic bass line.
The final flourish is The Shoemaker’s Daughter Set, a group of reels, the first a showcase of pure traditional playing before the band let rip and have some fun with dance form.
I Lost My Heart on Friday is irreverent, often unclassifiable music rooted in Europe with a big beating Celtic heart, and it’s blossoming half a world away from the mother lode. No wonder they call themselves Aerialists. This is music that is flying above the clouds.
Seán Laffey
LINDA MOYLAN
The Fool
Talking Elephant TECD499, 11 Tracks, 42 Minutes
www.lindamoylan.co.uk
Linda Moylan’s 3rd album, The Fool is out now on Talking Elephant records, with a combination of self-penned and co-written songs. A young woman and her collaborators looking at the immigrant experience in London, the hard knocks, the small successes, self-reliance, love and romance.
Irish Love Song is co-written with Ian Montague, a great romp of a song, the Friday evening pub session, the chance encounters, boy meets girl, boy puts his arms around her, eternal promise in the gesture but nothing real. A fleeting moment where the writers explore fate, coincidence, the randomness of human connection, the repeated refrain: ‘I wish I remembered more’, very effective, a solid swing beat, a touch of The Saw Doctors in the instruments and arrangements.
Hide Me London is all about displacement, another Moylan/ Montague poem. London the city is animated, being spoken to, in confessional tone: ‘I’m a long way from home’, also a tribute to the adopted place: ‘I’ve walked all your backstreets in these hand-me-down shoes’. There’s an ethereal sadness to it, as with all immigrant songs, estrangement, wanting to fit in, be accepted: ‘I’ve followed all your rules, crossed all your bridges’. Little I have, heartbreak, shame, regret, the futility of dreams, artistic ambition, the lover coming back after a fall, a failure, ‘your dignity unfurled’, somewhat sympathetic but with an edge, bittersweet lyrics, the speaker in a room that is ‘cold, the wick is low’, her sweet singing voice perfect with a delightful chant.
With enough accompanying instruments to put together a céili band, the overall sound is rich, layered, highly textured. The original songs are passionate and varied, phasing effectively through different moods and emotions. Closing out with her own version of Eric Bogle’s Green Fields of France feels entirely appropriate for the world we live in.
Anne Marie Kennedy
THORPE & MORRISON
Grass & Granite
Own Label, 11 Tracks, 49 Minutes www.facebook.com/thorpeandmorrison
Seán Morrison on fiddle, viola and vocals, and Harry Thorpe playing guitar and adding vocals are the lead players here. Based in Birmingham, the Anglo Scottish duo recorded this album in Bristol where they were joined by Michelle Holllaway (vocals) and Alex Garden (harmonium).
The album takes in a wide geography of tune sources from Thorpe’s native East Anglia in Big Skies & Water Meadows conjuring up open vistas from the flat fenlands of the East to Danish wedding marches - Brudestykke / Første Brudestykke from Sønderho, the continental landfall across drowned Doggerland. Those tunes are a gentle conversation between fiddle and guitar with momentary changes into pensive minor bars. Causeway Joy - The Oyster Wives Rant / Ales Engelska connect Seán with his ancestral home of North Uist, in the Outer Hebrides. The first tune here is busy and edgy as if we have to reach the next causeway before the flood tide, whereas the final tune is from Scandinavia, and given the Viking connection on Scotland’s west coast, it ends with a berserk accelerating shimmer.
The single from the album is the song The Girl I Left Behind Me, and it’s not the typical reworking of Brighton Camp/ An Spailpín Fánach; it tells another story, a poor Irish lad enlists in the British Army for foreign adventure, leaving behind a sweetheart who is from a higher class, and no matter how well he does, he can never return a gentleman. The track is divided by a set of reels to add drama, before the girl he left behind begs him to come home. He has no choice but to refuse, a reminder of the chasm dug by his poverty and her social station.
They go into the dark heart of the modern emigrant, alone in the megacity with Shane MacGowan’s Rainy Night In Soho, a quietly plucked fiddle and the almost a-cappella Scottish vocals from Morrison, reworking a contemporary classic - it is in danger of becoming my all-time favourite version. The song will be released as a single on October 4th and there’s already a monochrome video of the song straight from the recording studio. There’s only one word for it. Magical.
Seán Laffey
LEOIN RUA
A l’Auberge du Lion Rouge
Own Label, 6 Tracks, 29 Minutes www.leoinrua.com
Six Celtic music tracks from a French band who bring so much fun to Irish music. It’s happy straight from the get go with their take on the comic McCarthy’s Party. It smacks of American vaudeville; where’s Mick Moloney when you need to dig out a song’s history? Julien Destange’s version is probably the best rendition I’ve heard in years. The band seamlessly work in a set of Sliabh Luachra tunes as a bridge; they had these tunes from meeting Seamus Begley at the Celti’Cimes festival in the Savoie Mont Blanc region of France: the tunes are the Toureendarby/Cutting Bracken and The Knocknagoshel. They have a version of this song on YouTube if you are curious.
Leoin Rua have studied Irish music firsthand from acclaimed masters and they acknowledge this in the set Sonny’s Trip, in which they cite the influence of mentor Ed Boyd of Flook. Rebecca Noel sings an emotional version of The Foggy Dew, an antidote to the jollity of McCarthy’s Party. They pick up the spirit again on P Stands for Paddy I Suppose, pairing it with Davey Arthur’s D minor reel The Tam Lin, which has become something of a modern classic. They dip into the Silly Wizard back catalogue with their own version of Are Ye Sleeping Maggie and close the album with that bar room show stopper, Bobby Sands’ Back Home in Derry set to the tune that Christy Moore borrowed from Gordon Lightfoot’s 1976 song The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald.
This album is worth every penny for McCarthy’s Party alone, and after that, every other track is a bonus benefit you’ll not regret.
Seán Laffey
RÓ
Needing More
Own Label, Single 4 Minutes www.romusicofficial.bandcamp.com
Ró Ó hEadhra is a teenage talent with a noble ancestry in song, based in Inverness Scotland, with a paternal grandfather, the Irish song collector, singer and Gaelic scholar Aidan O’Hara and parents who are active in the world of traditional singing. The single features family members, dad Brian Ó hEadhra on keyboards, mum Fionnag NicChoinnich, and sister Órla Ní Eadhra. With parents who are singers themselves, scholars and folk club organisers, there is no doubt where the influences and positive enthusiasm for songs stem from.
The single was recorded in the family’s home studio and it is technically excellent as you’d expect. The song itself is a long poem composed of ten verses, each of four short lines, painting a picture of the modern teenage zeitgeist, a verse illustrates this:
Standing proudly on that stone
You shone with beauty control
The highest part marked with your presence
Knowing that your time was present
Musically the song is tied together with a constantly finger-picked guitar, some verses are choral with the addition of other voices and keyboards. This is a deeply considered debut recording, it is anything but a linear ballad, a modern moment echoing the worries of the world, uncertainty of personal identity, real war in our media and environmental fracture.
17-year-olds grow up fast these days and RÓ is no exception. There is musical maturity beyond those teenage years on Needing More.
Seán Laffey
SUSY WALL
The Spaces In Between
Own Label, 11 Tracks, 33 Minutes www.susywallmusic.co.uk
The Spaces In Between, the debut album from Susy Wall, is the culmination of a two year self-imposed sabbatical, where she immersed herself completely in songwriting. This came during a career break from her teaching and podiatry work. From the evidence on this album that time has been well spent. The songs here are condensed and refined; care has obviously been taken over lyrics, metaphor and music.
Take the song Truth, where she juxtaposes one statement against another. For example, Truth is out there somewhere I’m not lost, just not ready to be found. She tells a story in Dragonflies of urban commuters noticing each other briefly on the London Tube, a story of meetings in motion, romance on the rails, coffees and teas from underground cafes turned to something else. On Joy there’s an ebullient jangly jingle of strings which brings an inherent lightness to the song.
Susy has collaborated with one of the UK’s leading guitar players, Gordon Giltrap MBE, on the song Woman. There’s big back story here, the original intention was for Susy to add lyrics to an existing Giltrap melody, but suffice to say Susy’s lyrics and melody became a standalone number that got Giltrap’s approval and he joins her on the track. The track is further enhanced by the cello playing of Pete Harvey, and melancholy fiddle and a bright guitar give this song an almost Celtic presence.
We have to wait until track 10 for Spaces In Between, a song with a strummed guitar and keys (a Roland perhaps?) with its recurring message: ‘somethings are meant to be left behind… you’ve just got to let them go’. This is songwriting as catharsis, like the rest of the album it begs for our respect. This modern folk artistry shares the personal in a very public space and taps into the zeitgeist in 11 new songs.
Seán Laffey
JOHN SPILLANE
Fíoruisce - The Legend of the Lough
A Folk Opera Composed by John Spillane
Own Label, Double CD, 24 Tracks, 125 Minutes www.johnspillane.ie
This work is based on the Victorian Cork fairytale Fior-usga by Thomas Crofton Croker; his version was first published in Fairy Legends and Traditions of the South of Ireland 1825-28. Now some 200 years later, singer and guitarist John Spillane, already renowned for composing some iconic songs, has created this full folk opera based on that legend with featured artists including Ríoghnach Connolly, Eoin Ó Ceannabháin, Niamh Farrell and Nell Ní Chróinín.
It’s an ambitious bilingual work based on the Lough in Cork City, which, according to legend, covers a drowned kingdom. John has embellished and developed the existing surreal folk tale into a work in three acts which engages the listener from the opening Overture with brilliant vocal performances from the featured singers as well as John himself with his emotional and passionate delivery.
This album is the culmination of years of detailed research and study by John into the origins of the legend, and he draws on previous material including Peadar Ó Laoghaire, Seán Ó Tuama and Thomas Croker who wrote the original fairy tale. He weaves the various strands together with great care and respect for authenticity with representations of past events depicted through various plots and sub-plots, scenes of war, lullabies, laments and romance and a fleadh, culminating in the drowning of the kingdom in a final catastrophic event.
John has always been a deeply committed artist, following his muse with deep love and respect for his craft, and this latest work is indeed his magnum opus, recorded over two years with carefully selected collaborators who work together with superb individual and ensemble performances from all. Apart from the singers, there are some great musical contributions by John himself on guitar, Alan Doherty on flute, Lea Miklody (cello), Aisling Unwin on harp and percussionists Andrew O’Sullivan and Fionn Hennessy Hayes. Co-producing with John is Brian Casey, who also provides additional vocals and instrumentation throughout.
This is an important work which deserves a full stage performance and may well develop into a full touring show.
Mark Lysaght
