Sons of Southern Ulster: Through the Bridewell Gate (SOSU)
★★★★☆
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)
★★★★★
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)
★★☆☆☆
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)
★★★★☆
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.
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California Irish: The Mountains Are My Friends (7Hz Productions)
★★★☆☆
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.
