New Irish albums reviewed: Sons of Southern Ulster, Poor Creature, Darragh Morgan, The Swell Season and California Irish
★★★★☆
Through the Bridewell Gate by Sons of Southern Ulster
The malcontents of
Co Cavan
resurface with the aim of once again visualising young dreams in middle age. Three albums in (and 10 years from their formation),
Sons of Southern Ulster
can safely lay claim to be as authentically Irish post-punk as any of the current native crop touting a similar validity. Sprechgesang songs such as Billyhill Hall, Royal Breffni, and the especially lyrical To the New World and Back ('I heard the voice of Joe Dolan – 'make me an island,' he cried'), place mainstays David Meagher and Justin Kelly in a league and a psycho-geographic place of their own.
Poor Creature: All Smiles Tonight (River Lea Records)
★★★★★
All Smiles Tonight by Poor Creature
Cormac MacDiarmada
, John Dermody, and
Ruth Clinton
may have their limbs in other contemporary experimental folk bands (
Lankum
, Landless), but their eyes remain firmly focused on recalibrating songs from many years past and adding unexpected sonic twists and turns without making you reach for the smelling salts. Psyche-folk might be the applicable category or genre, but there's something else filtering through on multilayered tracks such as Willie O, Bury Me Not, Adieu Lovely Eireann and Hick's Farewell. Think more kosmische variations of Cocteau Twins, Enya and several spectral others, imbued with sean-nós, drone, and artists such as Sandy Paton, Jean Ritchie, and Karen Dalton. Producer
John 'Spud' Murphy
sets the controls for the dark heart of the sun, while Clinton (whose father, incidentally, was once a member of Ireland's finest R&B band, The Rhythm Kings) delivers vocal shivers and delights in equal measure. Definite Album of the Year vibrations from this one.
Darragh Morgan: For Violin and Electronics Vol II (Diatribe Records)
★★☆☆☆
Cover of For Violin and Electronics Vol II by Darragh Morgan
New music violinist
Darragh Morgan
has quite the professional career, performing not only with numerous contemporary music groups (including Ensemble Modern, Icebreaker and London Sinfonietta) but also with The Divine Comedy, the Spice Girls and Sigur Ros. The sequel to his 2017 album showcases examples of what could be, for some, taxing. There are shades of that throughout the 10 minutes of Zack Browning's Sole Injection (think repetitive hiccups with occasional stabs of police car alarms). Conversely, in Scanner's A Cantegral Segment, Morgan's playing is peak elegance, but the album's longueurs far outweigh the best moments.
The Swell Season: Forward (Masterkey Sounds)
★★★★☆
Forward by The Swell Season
Glen Hansard
and
Marketa Irglova
reunite as
The Swell Season
for their first album in 16 years, and to say the results are equal parts bittersweet, heartwarming and wise is a piercing understatement. The pair's personal history is (presumably) well enough known to view Forward as a story-driven sequence of confessional regret and acceptance. Whatever the truth, there's no denying the empathy and common threads that connect not just the songwriters but also their folksy songs. Listen to People We Used to Be, Stuck in Reverse, I Leave Everything to You and A Little Sugar without your eyes brimming, and you have a heart of stone.
READ MORE
California Irish: The Mountains Are My Friends (7Hz Productions)
★★★☆☆
The Mountains Are My Friends by California Irish
From bullish hard rock to harmonic folk is a turn we didn't expect Belfast's Cormac Neeson to take, but the former frontman of The Answer has taken to the sensibilities of Laurel Canyon like the proverbial duck to water. Gathering a bunch of musicians with similar influences, the mood enveloping the debut album by
California Irish
is, says Neeson, 'the opposite of boring AI-generated, no-soul perfection'. There is throughout, then, not only genuine creative instinct but also the kind of sonic warmth that comes only from musicians in a room taking cues and empathetic hints from each other.
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