There’s a quiet revolution afoot in the world of sean nós singing. Extraordinary voices (such as those of Lorcán MacMathúna and Radie Peat) are taking the big and the not-so-big songs of our tradition and breathing fresh life into them, often luring them into depths rarely ventured by their peers in the wider music industry.
Eoghan Ó Ceannabháin comes from a robust Connemara singing tradition. He has already forged a formidable identity in his 2021 duet album with Ultan O’Brien (Solas an lae) and in the band, Skipper’s Alley. This solo collection could be seen as a companion piece to recent albums by Lankum and John Francie Flynn (the latter also a bandmate).
Ó Ceannabháin’s richly textured voice draws deep from the well in his reading of Róisín Dubh, but the rest of the songs are of his own making, and they are as full of muscle, melancholy and mellow reflection as anything we’ve inherited from previous generations.
Choosing for his accompaniment everything from his own concertina and clarinet to cello, guitar, keyboards and whalesong, these are remarkable songs that, by Ó Ceannabháin’s own admission, have “brewed and stewed” in their own sweet time. With echoes of Margaret Barry on the funky Dublin City Fever Dream to the stark intimacy of Only the Earth, this is music of, by and for the fractured times we live in.
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A seismic collection that will linger long into the night.
