Album Review: Junior Brother, The End

‘Welcome To My Mountain’ – a swashbuckling medley of trad instruments, followed by that most distinctive voice from The Kingdom of Kerry summoning God – opens The End, Junior Brother’s third album, and his first on Peter Doherty’s Strap Originals label.

The backing of the Libertines man is well rewarded here, with JB delivering an Irish trad record unlike anything else in the imprint’s catalogue. Indeed, the album is unlike anything else, anywhere – stretching traditional Irish instruments into the beyond.

‘Small Violence’ is the sound of descending a dark, terrifying boreen, surrounded by fairy forts emitting the sound of banshees and will-o'-the-wisps. And that’s the intention – much of the album’s inspiration being derived from hours spent funnelling through UCD’S Folklore Collection.

Within these peculiar tales of bewilderment, Junior Brother finds emphatic parallels to the warping of contemporary life. There's the relentless daily grind of ‘Weekend’ (“There is no weekend, just days and days and days”), and ‘Today My Uncle Told Me’ tackles the rise of the far-right.

On ‘Take Guilt’, meanwhile, JB asks, “How they look at my face / How they look at the one beside me / Who matters?", in a searingly powerful and complex track that deals with immigration.

Elsewhere, closer ‘New Road’ queries the dastardly impact of land conversion, though it also possesses an intricate optimism.

It makes for a superb finale to an outstanding album.

9/10