Post Description

Folk, Irish singing, tradional folk, UK-New York.

Following the hand of fate which guided them from a remote village in the Austrian Alps to a tiny island in Greece, long time musical collaborators and world wanderers, Irish traditional singer and musician Nuala Kennedy and Dubliner / New Yorker singer songwriter Eamon O' Leary have created an atmospheric new album of songs entitled ‘Hydra’.

With guests including Will Oldham and Anaïs Mitchell, this record’s island setting seems to bring extra light and warmth to stories of the sea, love, work, war and migration

The Greek island of Hydra is not the subject of this luscious, balmy album of traditional songs, but the location of their recording in an 18th-century carpet factory overlooking the Aegean sea. To mention it in the album title could be canny marketing for lovers of louche idols Leonard Cohen and Henry Miller, who both found inspiration there, but its prominence also suits this LP’s drowsy warmth, given the extra light brought to these stories of the sea, love, work, war and migration.

Dundalk-born flautist, whistler and singer Nuala Kennedy adds rousing rainbows of colour to these arrangements. Her heraldic flute introduction to I Will Hang My Harp on a Willow Tree (a ballad of a heartbroken soldier, learned from Newfoundland singer Anita Best) is bracingly beautiful, as are her urgent reels at the end of the ghostly Willie-O. Her striking, high singing voice also pivots between friskiness and mellow maturity. It’s eerily innocent on Irish ballad Ag Bruach Dhún Réimhe (a song written to a song thrush by 18th-century poet Art Mac Cumhaigh, while he sheltered in castle ruins) and gorgeous in duet with O’Leary on the desperately sad but subtly sexy The Night Visiting Song (where a woman lets in her begging lover, wet to the skin).

Edged with inflections from New York, where he’s lived for the last 20 years, O’Leary’s vocals are more boy-next-door, but his bouzouki, guitar and piano playing are sumptuous. They reach full late 1960s folk-rock vibes on The Dark-Eyed Sailor and The Bonny Green Tree; closing track Liffeyside has backing vocals from folk-adjacent American royalty – Will Oldham and Anaïs Mitchell – alongside 80-year-old Irish singer Cathal McConnell. These many stitches of sound could feel excessive, but they never smother these songs, instead adding extra dimensions of magical colour and texture.

Tracks:
01. I Will Hang My Harp on a Willow Tree
02. The Dark-Eyed Gypsy
03. Willie-O
04. Two Jigs
05. The Bonny Green Tree
06. Ag Bruach Dhun Reimhe
07. The Dark-Eyed Sailor
08. Breton Tune & Reels
09. The Night Visiting Song
10. As We Rove Out
11. Liffeyside

Staat er compleet op, 10% pars mee gepost. Met zeer veel dank aan de originele poster. Laat af en toe eens weten wat je van het album vindt. Altijd leuk, de mening van anderen. Oh ja, MP3 doe ik niet aan.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_JZ9LwJVTYE