Kerry alt-folk artist Junior Brother has announced a new album The Great Irish Famine, due out September 2nd on Galway’s Strange Brew Records.
The followup to 2019’s Pull The Right Rope features the songs ‘No Country For Young Men’, ‘Life’s New Haircut’ and new song ‘No Snitch’ which debuts with a video directed by Bob Gallagher.
Tour Dates
Junior Brother has also announced a Dublin show at the Button Factory, Dublin – on October along with more tour dates below.
21st July – Galway International Arts Festival @ 8:00pm, Galway
30th July – All Together Now Festival 2022 @ 7:00pm, Portlaw
21st August – Footsbarn Theatre – Ballynabuck @ 7:00pm, Dingle
24th September – Night & Day Festival 2022 @ 7:00pm, Castlerea
28th October – The Button Factory @ 7:30pm, Dublin
The Great Irish Famine Tracklisting / artwork
- Opening
- Tell Me I’m A Fool
- No Country For Young Men
- Daly’s Well
- Life’s New Haircut
- Good Friday
- Given In The Dark
- King Jessup’s Nine Trails
- This Is My Body
- No More Dogs
- Landlord’s Hum
- No Snitch
- The Long Meadows
Album press release (excerpt)
Speaking about the themes across the album Kealy further explains, “I was very conscious to bring each element of the debut into this follow-up, but dramatically dig ten times deeper and stretch ten times further down into each avenue”. “No Snitch” soars amidst darkly comic self-reflection (“This Is My Body”), anxious reflexes on modern living (“No Country For Young Men”), and the painful role the past plays in a nation’s present (“King Jessup’s Nine Trials”).
Both startlingly dynamic and profoundly accomplished, The Great Irish Famine reflects fall-out of trauma both personal and universal, national, and international, minor, and mountainous, historic, and contemporary – all uncompromisingly conveyed through the magnetic, emotionally potent vision of a one-of-a-kind artist at the top of his game.
An idiosyncratic, challenging and richly lyrical singer/ songwriter, Junior Brother is the pseudonym of Co. Kerry, Ireland singer Ronan Kealy. Chosen as The Irish Times’ Best Irish Act of 2019 and nominated for the 2019 Choice Music Prize for Album of the Year, Junior Brother has built a rabid following thanks to unmissable live shows, and music both excitingly forward-looking and anciently evocative. His strange stories unfold with reckless abandon upon a distinctive guitar and foot tambourine accompaniment, influenced as much by the avant-garde as music from the Middle Ages and his home place in rural Ireland.
In addition to earning a Choice Music Prize nomination, Junior Brother’s trailblazing debut album Pull The Right Rope, also saw Kealy garner two nominations at the 2019 RTÉ Radio 1 Folk Awards, for Best Folk Album and Best Emerging Folk Act. Similarly, vigorous approval from modern-day Irish figureheads such as the Rubberbandits and Cillian Murphy has furthered Junior Brother’s stock, the latter playing Junior Brother several times on his BBC Radio 6 Music Show. Along-side further airplay, his television performances include appearances on RTÉ’s the Tommy Tiernan show, Other Voices and the Choice Music Prize Awards night in Vicar Street.
Produced by:
Julie MacLarnon and Ronan Kealy
Mixing and Additional Production: John “Spud” Murphy
Recorded onto 2″ Tape at Analogue Catalogue Studios, Rathfriland, Co. Down. Additional recording completed in Guerrilla Sound Studios, North Strand, Dublin and Winton Mews, Rathgar, Dublin.
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