Lemoncello: Lemoncello review – Subversive and silky sticks of sonic dynamite

Claddagh Records, the Irish traditional and folk label founded in 1959 by Garech de Brún and Ivor Browne, is slowly getting back on track, having signed a global licensing deal with Universal Music in 2020. Within months of that agreement the label entered a phase of signing new Irish talent that included Øxn and Niamh Bury.

More recently, the indie-folk duo Lemoncello – Claire Kinsella and Laura Quirke – were added to the label’s roster, but there is no danger of artistic toes being stepped on. Each act is as distinct as the other; Lemoncello’s music is inspired by strains of twisted, knotted indie-pop.

You can join the dots from their early days to now. The duo’s 2018 debut EP, Stuck Upon the Staircase, featured songs connecting with the creative vocabularies of the likes of Sam Amidon and Seamus Fogarty, two artists whose ideas of experimentation had inspired Kinsella and Quirke to stretch the margins of their own music. In other words, Lemoncello’s long-delayed debut album may show strong traces of their influences, but it has the collective force of personality to counteract them.

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It has helped them, also, to have played through the years with other Irish musicians (including David Keenan, Glen Hansard and Gareth Quinn Redmond) who use against-the-grain principles to make a point. There is, then, a sonic push and pull here that in its own way is quite subversive. For starters, there are the song themes that, although predictable (love, loss, life issues, social media), are often razor-sharp in their insights.

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Also, the nine songs are buoyed by the respective strengths of the two musicians and the heightened pleasure of their combined harmonies.

The overarching perception might be that the songs don’t land the necessary punches to set them apart from other folk/trad, but force isn’t everything. Songs such as Dopamine, Old Friend, Hard Truths, and Always Neighbours are silky sticks of dynamite. Take cover.