Album Review: Rónán Ó Snodaigh & Myles O'Reilly, Mise Tusa

Listening to Rónán Ó Snodaigh lilt, pulse and bounce across the title track of Mise Tusa fills your heart with rapture, and makes your skin prickle and goosebump. Oh man, trust me, it’s that seraphic, and makes it all the better to have Rónán and sparring partner Myles O’Reilly back on their third collaborative album.

The LP jigs out of the traps with ‘Cúl An Tigh’, the experimental sonics marvellous. The supplication of ‘Réir Dé’ is a blessing, while the merriment of ‘Táimse i mo Dhúiseacht’ – based on a poem written by Rónán’s mother, the sculptor and author Cliodhna Cussen – is wonderful. On Seán Mac Fheorais’ ‘Anseo I Lár an Ghleanna’, O’Reilly opens his box of sonic tricks, evoking the dash across the glen, with redcoats in pursuit, during the penal laws.

Pete St. John’s ‘The Fields Of Athenry’ is arguably Ireland’s best-known song – regularly belted out on terraces across the country – and here, the master duo breathe new life into it, returning it to the Great Famine lament it ostensibly is. Elsewhere, another English language track, Ger Wolfe’s ‘The Crackling Radio’, comes complete with pollinating bee and creaking gate.

Mighty stuff.

9/10