Irish

Record Review: Macdara Yeates’ “Traditional Singing from Dublin”

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Possessed of a crystal-clear voice with echoes of the style of Luke Kelly and the emotional depth-charge of Liam Weldon, Yeates’s full-bodied singing is never anything but his own

By Siobhán Long

Raucous, bawdy, reflective and wistful in turn, Macdara Yeates’s solo debut is a robust collection in which this Dublin singer revisits age-old tales and renders them anew with his own unforced imprint.

As a founder member of the Cobblestone singing session The Night Before Larry Got Stretched (as well as being a member of Skippers Alley), Yeates has a well-established pedigree in singing circles, but unlike his peers in Lankum, Landless and Ye Vagabonds, along with his erstwhile bandmates John Francis Flynn and Eoghan Ó Ceannabháin, he’s taken his own sweet time to let the songs gestate.

Yeates is possessed of a crystal-clear voice that contains echoes of the declamatory style of Luke Kelly and the emotional depth-charge of Liam Weldon, yet his full-bodied singing is never anything but his own. Light on decoration, Yeates favours a bareboned setting for most of his chosen songs, with many sung solo, and those that invite his own accompaniment on bodhrán and guitar are adorned with only the subtlest backdrop, reminiscent of the buoyant touch beloved of the late Dennis Cahill.

Yeates delights as much in the nonsense of his own version of The Herrin’ as he does in the poignant emigration song The Shores of Lough Bran (learned from the Connemara singer Sarah Ghriallais) and Dominic Behan’s Our Last Hope. Yeates’s colour palette is richly hued, thanks to the welcoming gabháil of his song book, where borrowings from Frank Harte, Seosamh Ó hÉanaí, Luke Kelly, Séamus Ennis and others coalesce to form a highly cohesive whole.

In a golden age for traditional singing in Ireland, Yeates’s debut comes as a further welcome affirmation that the torch is being passed to a generation who truly understand and value its worth, while acknowledging that they are not afraid to inhabit it with their own particular voice. Traditional Singing from Dublin is a candid, clear-eyed and uncluttered snapshot from a singer who is finally stepping into the spotlight.

Source: Macdara Yeates: Traditional Singing from Dublin – Passing of the torch in city’s vocal tradition – The Irish Times

Review: Brigid Mae Power’s “Songs for You” 

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Brigid Mae Power

Brigid Mae Power’s ‘Songs for You’ is a timeless record filled with brilliant moments that will melt the heart of even the most cynically covers-album-averse listener.

By Thomas Blake

Recording a cover of any reasonably well-known song is always a balancing act. How do you make something new enough for it to be worth the effort without shattering the appeal of the original? A cover, as opposed to an interpretation of a traditional song, carries with it an implicit debt to someone else’s creativity, and a corresponding duty to honour that creativity. It’s tough to get right – the deluge of frankly appalling tribute acts that have flooded the live music scene in recent years is proof enough of that – but on the rare occasions it does work, it can seem like a kind of alchemy.

On Songs for You, Brigid Mae Power has mastered that alchemy. She served notice of her ability to make other people’s material her own with a wonderful version of Tim Buckley’s I Must Have Been Blind on her 2023 album Dream from the Deep Well, and a year later, she has gone all the way with an album of nine covers. All of them are songs loved by her late father, or those she listened to while caring for him, and it is that sense of care, perhaps, that permeates these songs, and gives them an appeal far more enduring than your average cover version.

Most of them are reasonably well-known songs from the country, folk, and folk-rock neck of the woods. The main exceptions are Television’s See No Evil, which loses its New York snarl and circular riff but gains in return a newly-framed melody and a quiet kind of positive energy, and closer You Don’t Know Me, a sweet soul-pop classic made famous by Ray Charles. Power stays true to the song’s melancholy sweetness and plays subtly on its country-soul leanings. It makes for a truly timeless performance.

And that timelessness is all over the album. Power’s take on Bert Jansch’s Fresh as a Sweet Sunday Morning unfolds with an easy languor that becomes spine-tinglingly beautiful, indeed almost uncanny, with repeated listens. She has a knack for taking songs that could easily become cloying in the wrong hands and making out of them something feather-light but emotionally rich. Country yodeler Slim Whitman’s Rose Marie is stripped back to its essentials and becomes a kind of brief, elemental lament. Missing You, a quite brilliant modern ballad of the Irish diaspora written by Jimmy MacCarthy but made famous by Christy Moore, floats with an ethereal beauty that makes the hardships it describes all the more poignant.

The nuanced, minimal instrumental backing is a crucial part of the album’s appeal. Angel Blood (a Cass McCombs song) is backed by Power’s hazy organ; the newest song on the album, its nostalgic shimmer helps it fit right in. Walk On Out of My Mind, taken from the Waylon Jennings version, has an easy percussive clop. Roy Orbison’s In Dreams is almost impossibly laid-back, before Power’s voice rises lark-clear over the gentle strum of acoustic guitar.

Neil Young’s Mellow My Mind might be the best of all. Here, Power has achieved the trick of making me think again about a song I thought I knew inside-out: I always saw Mellow My Mind as a largely innocuous track on Tonight’s The Night, an album which has never quite got to me in the way it gets to most Young fans. Hearing Power’s version, though, has made me think again. Her voice has a unique way of highlighting a melody, and here it grapples with Young’s downbeat, burned-out original and comes up with something jewel-like and light-dappled. It’s one of many brilliant moments on a record that will melt the heart of even the most cynically covers-album-averse listener.

Songs for You (20th December 2024) Self Released

Pre-Order the Digital and Vinyl: https://brigidmaepower.bandcamp.com/album/songs-for-you

Source: Brigid Mae Power – Songs for You (Album Review) – KLOF Mag

Nationwide events mark traditional Nollaig na mBan holiday

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Swimmers took to the cold January sea for Women’s Aid on Sunday ahead of January 6th

By Sarah Burns

A number of events are taking place across the country today (Monday) to mark the traditional holiday of Nollaig na mBan, or “women’s little Christmas”.

January 6th, the feast of the Epiphany, is recognised as the last day of the Christmas season. In Ireland Nollaig na mBan is by tradition the day when women would generally take a break from the cooking and cleaning associated with the festive period, leaving them instead to men.

While domestic duties may be more equally shared across households in contemporary Ireland, the day of celebration is still marked by many.

Women’s Aid encouraged people to sign up for its Cold Swim for Women in order to raise funds for the charity, with participants able to take part in the event nationwide. Swimming groups and individuals around the country took their dip on Sunday to raise funds to support survivors of domestic violence and abuse.

The Irish Writers Centre is, meanwhile, hosting an event at Pearse Street library in Dublin on Monday night showcasing women writers including Jessica Traynor, Zoé Basha, Marianne Lee, Nuala O’Connor, Chandrika Narayanan-Mohan, Anne Tannam and Sophie White.

The communities of Ballybough, Clonliffe and North Strand in north Dublin will celebrate Nollaig na mBan with a daylong festival honouring local women. It includes an awards ceremony, a special conversation with Olympic gold medallist Kellie Harrington and a live music trail. The event begins at 2pm at the Charleville Mall Library.

he Cabragh Wetlands Centre in Holycross, Co Tipperary, also hosted an event on Sunday which included a range of talks on women’s health, chanting and poetry as well as some workshops.

The VHI mini-marathon, which takes place in June, had been running an early bird offer to mark Nollaig na mBan with a discounted registration fee, which has now sold out.

Source: Nationwide events mark traditional Nollaig na mBan holiday – The Irish Times