Quicksilver and giddy in its exploration of Irish music, language and identity, Trá Pháidín’s second album bursts open the idea of a 21st-century traditional folk record. It woos you with the reverb-smothered guitars and birdsong-like flutes of Tí Mhichael Phaddy (Michael Paddy’s House, an opener suggesting a psychedelically perfect rurality) before an Irish woman cuts in, bigging up her countryside Airbnb on the phone. A shouty local then comically interrupts her.
Trá Pháidín (Paddy’s Beach) are a six-strong collective of brilliant musicians from Galway, Ireland’s largest Irish-speaking county, and their album’s title, Cloch’s Claí (Stone and Dry Stone Wall), suggests that each track plays its own scabrous, weight-bearing part in the whole. The 45 minutes unfold as an interrupted sequence, full of improvisation, texture and ornament, the band freely roaming other genres, revealing them as connected neighbourhoods.
Mariachi and a fantastic motorik beat blast into the brilliant Garbhóg (The Rough One), before pastoralism returns. On Fothrach an Cheirtleáin (The Ruin of the Conurbation) the band strut like a disconsolate Mogwai, before To Hell or to Connacht’s intricate flutes, full of elegant, menacing repetition, swirl us into their undertow.
The lyrics throughout are full of Kneecap and CMAT-grade rage. Named after Flann O’Brien’s brilliant parody of Gaelic poverty memoirs, An Béal Bocht (The Poor Mouth) drops in rhythmic passages of words about people living in crumbling concrete, dreaming of the Celtic tiger and its tail. Seachtain na Gaeilge (Irish Language Week) is sharper still: over a slow dance, facts about the magic of the country are followed by English translations, delivered in a sinister whisper, that reveal the ridiculousness of tourism lingo (“this ancient tongue is over 10 years old”). Trá Pháidin also mock themselves for “being an Irish language band but speaking English on the sly”. Stinging, musically all-enveloping and often unexpectedly joyful, Cloch’s Claí suggests new foundations for folk with every listen.
Also out this month
Cladach/Mullach (Chamber Music Scotland) is the gorgeous debut from Peaks, a new duo of violinist George Smith and cellist Duncan Strachan. Exploring legends from Scotland’s Western Isles, its first five tracks showcase their pretty playing, before the story unfurls of a mother who exchanged her soul for her son’s ability to play a magical harp. Brìghde Chaimbeul provides spoken-word vocals over the ambient meditations. Two contemporary US masters also release ambitious albums. Rhiannon Giddens’ Hope Is the Thing With Feathers (Nonesuch) features a rousing band, made up of family and friends, playing full-blooded versions of Elizabeth Cotten’s Freight Train and folk songs such as Cluck Old Hen and Walk With Me. Jake Xerxes Fussell’s The Old Beloved Path (Fat Possum) is his most moving album yet: a gentle journey through traditional songs he adores, including Boney and Boll Weevil, and a surprising, delicate take on Lonnie Donegan’s Rock Island Line.
