The Goo 1
Interview JOHN BRERETON YE VAGABONDS Ye Vagabonds
is an Irish folk music duo consisting of brothers Diarmuid and Brían Mac Gloinn from County Carlow. Having been described as “being at the fore of a new wave of Irish folk”, they won three awards at the 2019 RTÉ Radio 1 Folk Awards: Best Track (for a recording of Foggy Dew), Best Album (their 2019 album The Hare’s Lament), and Best Folk Group. Their new album Nine Waves is another beauty, a beguiling mix of the new and old and it looks set to line them up for further accolades. We caught the brothers mid tour. AT THE FORE OF A NEW WAVE OF IRISH FOLK I’m intrigued about the line in your liner notes stating that ‘At any other time, for various reasons, we couldn’t have written these songs. We might have written others but not these’. Can you elaborate on this sentiment? Brían: When we wrote those liner notes, we were being deliberately underdescriptive, in order to give people a chance to take their own meaning from the songs. Traditional songs and the songs we write all take on their own meanings in the imaginations of new listeners and singers, so we wanted to allow that to happen freely. We wrote and arranged these songs in isolation from each other, which was a new experience for us, but also one that bore its own creative charge and intensity. The first time we came together to show each other all the new material we had both come up with, we both heard everything with fresh ears. It actually became a far more collaborative process than any other album we’ve made before. When we started to arrange and shape the songs, one thing we craved was the feeling of singing in a room with a crowd of people. We wanted to write songs that had room in them for collective singing, so that whenever the lockdowns did end, we could really feel like we were back in a room with people, and that everyone could share the experience of the songs. You have some great musicians guest on the album and I see that some of the tracks were improvised with them. You obviously trusted these people to lock in with you and deliver? PAGE 30 ILLUSTRATION: GLENN BROWN