Winterflower

Well – about fucking time! For all its reputation as the supposed cultural capital of this island, it’s been far too long since Galway produced a decent rock ’n’ roll band. Charis’s highly accomplished 2001 debut Desert Dark Sky marked them out as ones to watch but, perhaps wisely, they chose to eschew the Whelan’s route and instead jetted straight to America’s east coast, where they were acclaimed as “a Celtic version of the Dave Matthews Band” (Boston Globe).

Recorded last January in the austere Millennium Room of Tipperary’s Killenure Castle, Winterflower fully confirms Charis’ status as the west’s most original and experimental rock band. The comparison with Dave Matthews is justified to a certain extent but this isn’t check-shirted jock rock, not by a long shot.

Frontman John Conneely – who looks like an alien Michael Stipe (I know, I know) – sings with a maturity and world-weariness that belies his relative youth, expertly backed by guitarist Eoin McCann, who plays his six strings with Joycean musical trickery. Bassist Luis Asturias and drummer Bruno Staehlin, from Spain and Switzerland respectively, add the European flavour. The resulting sound is sprawling, genre-hopping and impossible to pigeonhole.

Conneely is a gifted lyricist and some of his themes are particularly timely – the haunting title track is written from the point of view of a soldier dying on the battlefield and on ‘When I Open My Eyes’ he mournfully sings “It is the end of the world/I watch the fury of God unfurl.” The most obvious single here is ‘2019’, a giddy, banjo-fuelled ditty about the earth being hit by a comet.

Things being the way they are, Winterflower is unlikely to achieve any imminent chart success. But it’s a truly superb second album from a serious Galway band who’ll stay the course and whose next record will have The Frames and their cronies shitting themselves.