FROM the very first track (‘Come Down to the Square’), Seamus Fogarty makes his intentions clear: let’s get lost, let’s get screwed up, let’s mess around with form and content.
True to Fogarty’s ideas, Ships (Lost Map) is something else altogether.
It’s trad music (kind of), but not as we know it. It’s electronic music (definitely), but rarely as we’ve heard it described. It’s Germanic synthesiser rhythms mixed with early Pink Floyd’s psychedelic pop music and then booted up the arse with old folk song verses and a tin whistle.
“I think there are a few miserable songs on the album, for sure,” says Fogarty, mining the streets of Walthamstow for inspiration rather than the Irish countryside, “but to my mind, there’s something strangely uplifting about this collection.” He’s right. An early contender for end-of-year Best Albums lists? Hup!
New music from Seamus FogartyFOR something less experimental but no less enjoyable, say hello to South Armagh blues-rock journeyman Ben Reel and his 12th studio album, Spirit’s Not Broken (B. Reel Records).
After almost 30 years as a road warrior and indefatigable performer, it’s clear that the album title is well-intentioned. Indeed, there is a distinct sense that Reel’s innate message of positivity (“It’s easy to feel powerless,” he says in the album’s press release, “but this album is a reminder of a simple truth: Love one another”) will continue for some time.
The music, as one might expect, is a tight, gritty and accomplished mix of rock, Americana, and Rhythm’n’Blues – a little bit of Bruce Springsteen, a little bit of John Hiatt, and a whole lot of the Reel deal.
LIKE Ben Reel, Dubliner Gary McFarlane is in it for the long haul. As the creative mainstay of Autumn Owls, the musician/songwriter has been on the go for almost 20 years. With career and life fluctuations (one of which was an extended period at his family home in Dublin during the funfest that was Covid) pulling him this way and that, McFarlane finally found the time to write new songs.
The outcome of that fragile, uncertain time is Here in the Bardos (Insomnia Lodge), a collection of pulsating, poignant pop/rock songs that, he says, attempts “to make sense of death and the ghosts of adolescence.
Its songs trace young lovers around old streets…” An album created out of a time of reflection (a Tibetan term, ‘bardo’ is, in essence, a transitional interval where a spiritual awakening can occur), the songs are measured, mature, and ridiculously catchy.
The Scratch's new releaseSPEAKING of which, The Scratch ensure that their third album, Pull Like a Dog (Sony Music Ireland/Music for Nations), is as authentic a statement as four melody-driven metalheads can manage.
There is no disparagement here - the uncompromising quartet is shaping up to be one of Ireland’s most distinctive bands.
With neither airs nor graces, the mix and fusion of music styles here is beyond impressive.
When they’re not metaphorically kicking television screens to smithereens with songs such as the title track, Roses and Poses, Pullin’ Teeth, and Gladrags, they are pushing out the experimental boat with tracks like Ringsend (a spooky ballad featuring the contributing guest vocals of Susan O’Neill) and Cracks (think Clannad’s celestial harmonies glued to the guttural vocals of Damien Dempsey).
The result is a blast of the highest order.
See More: Irish Music, Seamus Fogarty, The Scratch
