Following both a global pandemic and an acclaimed, landmark debut album, inimitable Irish Alt-Folk act Junior Brother returns with The Great Irish Famine, and a new single titled “No Snitch”. The album comes on the heels of his lauded 2019 album Pull The Right Rope via multidisciplinary Irish label Strange Brew.
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.
The Great Irish Famine leaps boldly forward into an exciting new chapter, and into a shaken new world - staggeringly profound, brutally beautiful in its epic sweep. The lead single “No Snitch” - which is released digitally today with a 7” release to follow – is an intoxicating first taste of this new material. A track of towering, bruised catharsis, Kealy’s emotive and powerful vocals fluctuate across the tracks temperamental instrumentation which is both at once tumultuous and calming.
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.
