A Time to Grow

The Breath’s Ríoghnach Connolly guests on this album from the folk trio from Inishowen in northern Donegal, alongside sisters Karen, Lorna and Joleen McLaughlin, whose vocal harmonies are augmented by fiddles, ukulele, banjo, guitar, harp, mandolin, piano and accordion. It’s 20 years since they released their debut, Between Us, and six years since their last album, Far Beyond the Stars. Recorded at Attica Audio studios in rural Donegal, the sisters’ celestial vocal harmonies on the likes of ‘Where are We Now’ are delicious, while ‘Not Your Fight’ features Ríoghnach Connolly, and was born from a writing collaboration between Connolly and Karen McLaughlin when the former was artist-in-residence at the Nerve Centre in Derry.

To follow, the moody instrumental ‘Inghinidhe na hÉireann’ is a cinematic, piano-and fiddles-led tune, its title drawn from Yeats’ muse Maud Gonne’s radical Irish nationalist women’s movement. To follow, ‘Colours in the Sky’ mines the seam of the McLaughlin sisters’ Americana influences, sounding sweet and untroubled, while ‘Winter’s Day’ employs a woozy rhythm track and spectral guitar lines set against the sisters’ vocals, and album closer ‘Don’t Fear the Night’ has an old-time feel, and a sweetness that ensures all fears fly away.