Solas
Irish-American supergroup Solas have always been great. Now they’ve upped the ante again with a new concept album titled Shamrock City, which officially hits the streets on Feb. 5. Band leader and producer Seamus Egan set out to tell the true story of his great-great uncle, Michael Conway, who left County Mayo, Ireland in 1910 and boarded a ship bound for the copper mines and boxing rings of Butte, Montana. Six years later, in a cloud of mystery, he was dead at the hands of local police.
Shamrock City
The breadth and depth of this record reward the listener at every turn. From snippets of archival sean nós singing to pounding feet and clawhammer banjo, the material here spans from east to west and from trad to modern. And the guest artist list reads like a who’s who of the folk star galaxy: Rhiannon Giddens (Carolina Chocolate Drops), Dick Gaughan, Aoife O’Donovan (Crooked Still), Natalie Hass, Dirk Powell, Trevor Hutchinson (Lunasa), and others. Here’s a medley of American tunes and a song written by band members Mick McCauley and Seamus Egan.
LISTEN: High, Wide, And Handsome
LISTEN: No Forgotten Man
Solas Website
From his press release: Eriksen transforms global fragments into a tale of an imaginary town, told with a keen emotional edge… To tell this story, the story of the New England village of Pumpkintown, Eriksen draws subtly on decades of intensive study of the South Indian veena and its repertoire, on years of wrangling with the difficult but rewarding bajo sexto, and on a lifetime of singing deeply rooted, highly emotional traditional ballads. In Pumpkintown, young men set out on journeys over the sea, people live and love and die and dance, and the graveyard and hills mark time.
You’ll find nary a fiddle tune on Old Light. Instead, Rayna shares a cohesive collection of lush and languid ballads both old and new. She is joined by a stable of stellar artsts that includes her father Dan Gellert, Alice Gerrard, Scott Miller, Abigail Washburn, Nathan Salsburg, and Kai Welch, among others. The result is dark and deep, like a high mountain swimming hole: inviting and yet chilling. Enjoy.
