Rosc

Celebrating 15 years together and a decade on the touring circuit, Limerick-based quintet Goitse mark the dual anniversary in style with their sixth studio album, Rosc. The title suggests an anthem, chant or wave of emotionally heightened music. A notion given lithe, liquid voice in what feels like a warming, melancholia-tinged post-COVID release from a band at ease with themselves. With their now well-developed sense of ensemble firm and flexible, the addition of half-a-dozen guests thickens textures and broadens the colour spectrum with wholly simpatico transatlantic tones.

Danny Collins’ piano accordion adds a reviving Appalachian tang to the track ‘Rockin’ in the Weary Land’, Colm McClean’s lap steel guitar drives along ‘Write Me Down’ with a cantering frontier rhythm, Pádraig Rynne’s concertina fans the combustible ‘Cave of the Wild Horses’. But the day undoubtedly belongs to core quintet. Alan Reid’s characterful banjo shares the limelight with Áine McGeeney’s elegant fiddle and silk-soft vocals, which is a real treat on the traditional English folk song ‘Come You Not from Newcastle’ and the lilting emigration ballad, ‘Green Fields of Canada’. Conal O’Kane’s guitars, Tadhg Ó Meachair’s piano accordion and keyboards, and Colm Phelan’s bodhrán and percussion ink in the fivesome’s most accomplished and entertaining album to date.