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The Gaelic word Lúireach means a kind of armoured breastplate, but it can also be translated as a hymn sung for protection. This double meaning – the physical and the spiritual bound up in a single word – is a good way of beginning to understand the quiet beauty of Irish quartet Landless’s second album. Here is a music that feels close and tight-knit but never constrictive. It is the idea of protection as a form of freedom. Or to put it another way, the idea of strength in unity, of being in a place where you are free to create on your own terms.
Lúireach Bhríde, the song that gives the album its name, was first recorded in 2018 as part of an RTÉ commission to celebrate the lives of Irish women; the lyrics were written by poet Annemarie Ní Churreáin, adapted by the group, and later reinterpreted by filmmaker Tadhg O’Sullivan. The song itself is full of jubilant but determined energy, underpinned by minimal instrumentation that gives it a hymn-like feel, an ancient power that belies its recent composition.
The album is full of such beautiful, timeless moments. Landless have an innate knack for making new and old songs flow naturally together. This natural flow starts at an almost subatomic level: core members Lily Power, Méabh Meir, Ruth Clinton and Sinéad Lynch gel their work together so seamlessly that it is sometimes hard to tell where one voice or instrumental drone ends and another begins. But they never let things become one-dimensional. Opening track, The Newry Highwayman, begins in traditional enough fashion: just a single voice, haunting and detached. But then the harmonies kick in, and a kind of eerie clarity is attained. Strange screeches and drones are next to join the fray, followed by a trombone – played by Alex Borwick – that sounds like it is coming from beyond the grave.
Another surprise comes in the form of Clinton’s delicate but startling clavichord on The Hag, a Robert Herrick poem set to music by Lynch. Strangest and arguably most beautiful of all is the Slovakian folk song Ej Husari, another tragic tale ornamented by the haunted sound of Meir’s singing bowls. Blackwaterside provides some light relief and allows the group to develop some sweet and satisfying harmonies. Here and on a wonderful rendition of Death and the Lady, the influence of the Watersons can be felt.
Lúireach was produced by John ‘Spud’ Murphy, who has been the common denominator in a fistful of the best albums from the last couple of years, including recent releases by ØXN, John Francis Flynn and Lankum (whose Cormac MacDiarmada makes a handful of appearances across Lúireach). Here, Murphy strikes an almost paradoxical balance between intimacy and spaciousness, allowing the quartet’s voices to float freely above church-like organ drones or, as on the Ewan MacColl song The Fisherman’s Wife, using a skeletal piano as a framework on which the song can build imperceptibly into a thing of restrained power. The musical backing on Orcadian ballad The Grey Selkie of Sule Skerry is barely there at all, a drone just audible enough to create an air of melancholy and gravitas befitting the tragedy of the lyrics. As the song reaches its dramatic conclusion, the music builds and then drops out, a subtle but brilliant manipulation of mood.
At the heart of Landless’s immense appeal is their talent as vocalists and harmonists. They have an uncanny ability for making a combination of two or more voices sound unearthly or joyous or resolved or sad, and the result is an album of apparent simplicity which in fact has countless different sides to it. Lúireach is a reliquary of rich, dramatic tales and a celebration of resolutely feminist togetherness, and it is yet another triumph for the fantastically productive Irish folk scene.
Lúireach is released on 7 June 2024 via Glitterbeat
Pre-order on Bandcamp: https://landless.bandcamp.com/album/l-ireach
DSPs: https://idol-io.ffm.to/luireach
