Album Review: Seán Mulrooney, This Is My Prayer

Having first come to prominence as the frontman for Dublin punk noiseniks, Humanzi – who once looked destined to be Ireland’s next big things, years before Fontaines D.C. took up the mantle – Seán Mulrooney then decamped to Berlin for 13 years, where he formed psychedelic folkies Tau & The Drones of Praise.

Following a relationship break-up, he found himself living in a cabin in the wilds of Wicklow in January 2024, where much of this debut solo album was written. So far, so Bon Iver. Musically, the album incorporates elements of folk, country and Americana, all imbued with a strange psychedelia all Mulrooney’s own.

His lyrics definitely come from the weirder end of the spectrum on tracks like psychedelic blues shuffle ‘Jaguar Dreams’, and the psych-folk of ‘Aphrodite’ and ‘Soul Seer’. ‘The Pufferfish’, meanwhile, is an absolutely hilarious honkytonk meditation, on how dolphins can apparently get their kicks from a psychoactive compound called tetrodotoxin, which is released by pufferfish.

On occasion, things get a little too odd, but when he gets it right, like the strident title track, the haunting folk of ‘Walking With The Wind’, or the spiritual, hymnlike ‘Ag Múscliaghacht’ – complete with beautiful uilleann pipes – the results are very impressive indeed.

7.5/10

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