Ye Vagabonds: Nine Waves review – a gently engaging follow-up

As elsewhere throughout these isles, Irish people is gathering momentum. Ye Vagabonds – brothers Diarmuid and Brían Mac Gloinn – boast a peer group that features Lankum, Lisa O’Neill and Brigid Mae Energy, all of whom are refurbishing custom in deft, impressed methods. Right here, the Carlow-born, Dublin-based Mac Gloinns put aside the Irish songs of The Hare’s Lamenttheir first album for Tough Commerce offshoot River Lea, a label turning into a Hibernian drive – in favour of conventional and unique items sung in English. Irish-speaking Donegal, their mom’s house, remains to be powerfully current, although, on An Island, an evocation of Arranmore that recollects early Paul Simon, and Blue Is the Eye, an elegiac piece for a misplaced buddy and fisherman.

Sibling harmonies are on the coronary heart of the Vagabonds’ sound, delivered softly and unfussily, however the brothers are adept guitarists, and increase their preparations with cello and bass from classical group Crash Ensemble, and with harmonium concertina and sax. A brace of quick instrumental interludes counsel avant-garde ambitions, however songs take centre stage; the Youngster ballad Lord Gregory, and the equally vintage Máire Bhán and Her Mantle So Inexperienced, the final a fraught encounter between maid and soldier. Mild however participating.

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