Album Review: Junior Brother, The Great Irish Famine

Ronan Kealy doesn’t sound like anybody else. Or perhaps a better way to put it is that nobody else sounds like Ronan Kealy. His is a voice that’s as far removed from the mainstream as it’s possible to get, in a similar manner to that other folk outlier, Cavan’s Lisa O’Neill. The other thing that both artists share is an uncompromising, lyrical talent that shines through everything they do.

Kealy’s second album under his adopted moniker, Junior Brother, is a heady brew of acoustic guitar, raw percussion (often just a tambourine) and the unusual, almost preternatural, timbre of his singing voice. Highlights include the frenetic ‘No Country For Young Men’, chronicling the inherent anxiety of modern living; the wild, imaginative musical flight of ‘Tell Me I’m A Fool’, propelled by relentless, staccato percussion and beautiful melodies; the hilarious ‘This Is My Body’; and ‘King Jessup’s Nine Trails’, where a tenderly plucked guitar forms the backdrop for a madcap tale of incarceration and laceration.

Recent single ‘No Snitch’ is wonderfully angry, Kealy spitting “I’ll hate you forever for what you’ve done”. The magnificent ‘Good Friday’ is Kealy as his catchiest and most accessible, contrasting with the cacophonic throb of ‘Given In The Dark’, which is amongst the most unsettling two minutes you’re likely to set ears on in 2022. A strange but wonderful trip.

Out now on Strange Brew.

8/10