Live Report: Junior Brother brings the beautifully strange to St. Luke's Church

Junior Brother is no easy artist to write about, even less so when the content deals in a live concert atmosphere, where the barrage of brilliance comes at you from every conceivable angle without pause. But like the artist himself once sang: “Onward, unaware”.

Walking into the deconsecrated cathedral at St. Luke’s felt like attending the mass of one’s dreams, with cans nestled on the rails and a flurry of folk-favouring punters shuffling into the pews. Making my way down the alley, I was unsure whether I should kneel before taking my seat. Needless to say, I knew something spiritual was about to take place.

At 9p.m., the venue lights dimmed. Without much warning, the Junior Brother Band - Dan Walsh, Tony McLoughlin and Junior himself, aka Ronan Kealy - strolled on stage to raucous applause and freshly-cracked Beamishes held out in a loyal toast before the crowd settled back into their seats.

Describing what happened next feels a little like trying to describe a coma or a trip to Willy Wonka’s chocolate factory. A grave and awed intensity muted the audience. Sat there amongst it all, I felt myself a node in a network of raw feeling, a little plant simply reacting to the strange whirl of light and sound. As he began to play an unfamiliar melody, we came to what felt like a ground-shaking realisation: Junior Brother was not only there to perform but to perform new material for us lucky witnesses.

Junior Brother. Live at St. Luke's Cork. 24 March 2024. Copyright Trevor McGrath

Starting things off with an untitled track, it became immediately apparent that the Kerry artist’s latest tunes will not only honour his acclaimed gothic folk frequencies, but will also tune into other rockier and hip-hoppier morsels from the music history timeline.

Kicking into high gear, he followed-up with ‘No Country For Young Men’, from The Great Irish Famine and the 2023 single ‘The Men Who Eat Ringforts’. The one-two punch provided us with indelible lines [“can’t tell the goons from the guards”] and incomparable, fleshed-out melodies.

Junior Brother. Live at St. Luke's Cork. 24 March 2024. Copyright Trevor McGrath

To perform Junior Brother’s philharmonic, larger-than-life songs with a trio can’t be easy. It’s the difference between, say, a forest and a garden. But the economy was unbeatable. McLaughlin’s mandolin swirls waltzed with Walsh’s idiosyncratic drum stylings. Tempos swayed forward, hung back and hurtled ahead. A solo-flying Junior delivered a breath-taking, nine-minute stand-out with ‘King Jessup’s Nine Trials’, while an accompanied rendition of ‘Hungover At Mass’ felt all-too-real among the empty cans and a stained-glass Jesus looking down on us.

Junior Brother. Live at St. Luke's Cork. 24 March 2024. Copyright Trevor McGrath

Another new track - the third of the night - closed out Junior Brother’s set, but not before the band returned to the stage to perform ‘Full of Wine’, a five-and-half-minute masterpiece that turns the memory of a drunken night into an existential edict. It’s the kind of song that can stand up to any other song, and its live rendition proved no different, if not better. With its guitar-driven resplendence, cathartic vocals and anthemic percussion, the tune offered the perfect cap to an already sublime performance. 90 minutes in Junior Brother’s company flies by.