Styling himself, not inaccurately, an “alt-punk folk troubadour” Galway maverick Fia Rua (a member of a loose tribe of artists called the Urchin Collective) blends good-timey melodies and toe-tapping rhythms with a serious message.
On his third album, he explores issues such as global warming and masculinity with a mixture of deadpan seriousness and wry humour. Musically, it’s a rough and ready mélange of country, Cajun, trad and Waterboys-style raggle-taggle. Under a mid-tempo rhythmic shuffle, opener ‘River Gort’ kicks things off nicely. ‘Baby I’m A Liar’ is fast paced and punkish, with an acoustic riff reminiscent of Eddie Cochrane’s ‘C’mon Everybody’. Later, he pauses for breath on the languid, Pogues-style ballad ‘When Mark Met Tom’.
Elsewhere, melancholic slow-burner ‘Darkness’ broaches the subject of depression (“can’t handle the day until you have gone... feel you all over me and under my skin”) and spirits soar on the rollicking, up-tempo ‘Long Weekend (In Galway Town)’. Meanwhile, a plucked banjo backdrops ‘The Waves Are Gonna Take Your Sons’ which tackles the issue of environmental damage and rising sea levels. He rounds matters off with the delightful ‘Bohemian Rednecks’, a hilarious percussion-based diatribe against Plastic Paddies.