The Great Irish Famine

Ronan Kealy, aka Junior Brother, from County Kerry, was hailed The Irish Times’ Best Irish Act 2019, when his debut, Pull the Right Rope, was released. He’s an outlier in traditional Irish folk, drawing on ancient song traditions while bringing a touch of the avant-garde and contemporary into play. The opening instrumental track – the aptly-titled ‘Opening’ – rustles and scrapes into being on an ensemble of strings, advancing like a storm until it breaks overhead, and segues into the percussive, foot-stomping ‘Tell Me I’m a Fool’, strings building behind his guitar and foot tambourine, and his voice unlike most others. Think of Alasdair Roberts’ way with song delivery. It’s highly distinctive, and carries the story as much as it carries a tune.

If the album has a theme, it’s personal and collective trauma, including the years of the pandemic we’ve lived through, personal traumas, and inherited generational ones too, under the shadow of the Famine and religious and social repressions. The powerful energy of ‘No Country for Young Men’ could speak to the migrants from famine as much as it does to current generations, struggling under the yoke of post-COVID economics. The songs of The Great Irish Famine are from a shaken world, songs that can be both cathartic and comic, personal and universal.