The Beautiful Road

Kíla frontman Rónán Ó Snodaigh and fellow musician and film-maker Myles O’Reilly's first outing together on disc, 2021's Tá Go Maith, was a surprising but satisfying amalgam of folk and traditional wrapped in an ambient glow. Live performances post-pandemic have lent the collaboration a greater sense of depth even as it seems to strive for greater detachment. That conundrum plays itself out with a graceful, consummate precision on follow-up The Beautiful Road. Inspired by the sounds of birdsong, wind, rain and sea, its nine-song set, recorded over as many days in remote Roscommon, serves as both hymnal to nature and meditative refuge from the hurly-burly of urban living.

Lead single ‘Níl Aon Easpa Orm’ (I am not Without) drapes Ó Snodaigh's distinctive Dublin vocals with an otherworldy electronic wash that ebbs and flows to variously spotlight a discrete dialogue between guitar and brushed bodhrán. Subtlety is all here, a sense of otherness too; the title track, haloed by high wordless voices, sounds like an offcut from late-period The Beatles.

There's something incantatory about ‘Análl Mór Doimhin’, Ó Snodaigh's dark baritonal shamanic voice backed by disembodied choir and organ-like swells, hinting at mysteries and revelations. Intimations that album closer ‘Bacon, Eggs, Blood and Bread’ poetically confirms.