Chronicles of the Great Irish Famine

Fear and flight marked Ireland in the 1840s, when a series of famines laid low the island with devastating consequences. The trauma was exacerbated by mass emigration and the prospect of the workhouse and forced labour for those left behind. Delving deep into that dark history, Declan O'Rourke's Chronicles of the Great Irish Famine telescopes the political and the personal into a searing song cycle that blazes with anger and compassion. He has surrounded himself with an ensemble of illustrious soloists; among them The Dubliners’ John Sheehan on fiddle, uilleann piper Mike McGoldrick, harpist Floriane Blancke and singers John Spillane and Pauline Scanlon. O'Rourke describes this baker's dozen of new songs as an attempt to ‘bring fresh air to an unhealed wound.’ There's much heartache along the way, the individual tales of tragic, unnecessary deaths the bleak thread that holds the cycle together. There's stoicism in the beautifully delicate ‘Laissez Faire’, courage in the defiant ‘Rattle My Bones’ and a rare moment of nostalgia for a time before starvation and cruelty in the haunting ‘Clogman's Glen’. It's an altogether emotional experience delivered with consummate grace by O'Rourke, beautifully played, exquisitely detailed and evocatively packaged.