Album Review: Niamh Bury, Yellow Roses

Niamh Bury’s Yellow Roses is a beautiful and powerful creation. A collection of finely-wrought songs that feel like they have simply been aching to spring forth, it possesses the rare energy of a properly auspicious debut.

Niamh is one of only three acts to be signed to the legendary Claddagh label in several years, alongside ØXN and Lemoncello – a roster that clearly places women to the fore.

Produced by Ye Vagabonds’ Brían MacGloinn, Yellow Roses is made up of ten skilfully painted vignettes. The effect of immersing yourself in the record is holistic, like gazing up at a sweeping fresco, the detail so magnificent it’s impossible to decide where to lay your eyes first. Visions emerge in one section, then echo in another – bells pealing, wings beating, whistles summoning.

Niamh, and her acoustic guitar backing, are at the heart of the LP's sound. She doesn’t need much else to frame her opal pendant of a voice, which can reach icy altitudes as well as, on occasion, evoking a troubadour singing through tobacco smoke. Orchestral and Appalachian sounds flicker briefly, before returning to the undertow.

Songs like ‘What Am I To Tell Him?’ or the jaw-dropping debut single ‘Beehive’ speak to Niamh’s unadulterated musical sublimity. But, this excellence did not develop in a vacuum. She has put in the hard yards to get to where she is.

Niamh has been a central fixture at The Cobblestone’s monthly traditional singing sessions – known as ‘The Night Before Larry Got Stretched’– and word of her razor-sharp lyricism and lush vocal timbre has already travelled well beyond Dublin’s trad/folk orbit. Those roots are on full display here.

‘Lovely Adam’, a rearrangement of the folk lament ‘Loving Hannah', peels Niamh’s sound back to its gleaming bones, invoking those billowing Irish airs. This rendition takes a winding path, but it is a fascinating one, moving through layers of ethereal warblings that are set against a salvo of hypnotic strings and guitar lines that swell and undulate to lovely effect.

On ‘Budapest’, the album's closer, she drapes the entire work in undulant perfection with a final verse that nearly tore my heart out:

Put me in a basket and send me up the river
Let the mothers hold me
When I cry and shiver
I’m packaged and posted
Ready to be delivered

That last couplet is a fitting analogy for this record – and for Niamh's blossoming career. Today, she arrives at our doorstep. Tomorrow, the world awaits...

9.5/10

Yellow Roses is out now