Dublin folk duo Varo announce collab album featuring Lankum, John Francis Flynn, Anna Mieke, Junior Brother, Lemoncello and more

The Dublin duo of Lucie Azconaga and Consuelo Nerea Breschi have a new album out on May 9th featuring a huge cast of Irish folkies.

VARO’s new album The World That I Knew is released Friday May 9th 2025.

It features a new single released today called ‘Red Robin’ featuring the harp playing of Alannah Thornburgh.

The collaborative album is five years in the making and features a who’s who of Irish musicians in the folk and trad arena including Ian Lynch (Lankum), John Francis Flynn, Anna Mieke, Alannah Thornburgh, Junior Brother, Slow Moving Clouds, Niamh Bury, Inni-K, Ruth Clinton and Cormac MacDiarmada (Poor Creature), Lemoncello and Branwen.

Watch the video for the filmed by Daniel Bolaños Meade and directed by VARO.

“We learned this song from a 1977 recording of Mikey Kelleher (1907-1987), found in an online collection of songs from County Clare. We immediately fell in love with the melody and lyrics, which describes a state of mind rather than a real story. It seemed to paint a paysage of melancholy, memories and loneliness, and at the same time of extreme human warmth and connection with the elements of nature.”

Lucie Azconaga and Consuelo Nerea Breschi (VARO)

Alannah Thornburgh and another of the album’s collaborators, Branwen, will join VARO at their headline show at the Pepper Cannister Church, Dublin on Saturday 25th January, as part of TradFest 2025. Tickets available now from TradFest.com.

The album is available for pre-order on Bandcamp.

In 2020, VARO decided to work on a meaningful project related to the challenging and historical times the world was experiencing during the lockdown.
Through the passage of time, political, social and cultural contexts vary, but the core of people’s experiences and feelings remain the same. Loneliness, heartbreak, racism, the importance of human connection, criticism of social and political context, homesickness, are universal themes. These themes are coextensive, not only nowadays but with the rich heritage of traditional music.

VARO, together with each collaborator, carefully chose a selection of ten songs, written between thirty and three hundred years ago that reflect this connection between our recent lived experience and our cultural heritage.

Through this patchwork of music, stories and personalities, this album illustrates the timeless continuity of the human experience, using material written in the past to reflect the thoughts and feelings of people nowadays. 

VARO

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