The Goo 1
OCT '25 ‘Peppersome’ Inni-K notes ‘I was just kin
d of playing out sadness and and, and playing out what I was feeling at the time. And it’s quite, I think it’s a bit heartbreaking as a melody and then singing with it. But that song, and that tune and all the songs, even though there’s a few of them, are quite sad. I found them really healing and really cathartic, to make and to sing and, and that thing of making something out of a hard time and out of grief and loss and sadness and then kind of giving it to the world. It’s like, it’s not mine anymore. It’s just something I made.” The act of taking private pain and transforming it into shared sound is the heart of folk practice. The fiddle runs like sruthán through the record, carrying brón, but also release. There is joy too, in her playfulness with form. “Letting in Dreams” shows another side of Ní Chatháin. “It’s kind of boisterous or something. It’s kind of bowels, you know, it’s like just saying it out and just talking to myself, having a conversation between me and myself, on one side and trying to put myself down. On the other side, trying to let in the good and let in life and let in love.” This, too, echoes the tradition: the way laments sit beside lively jigs, how keening songs carry both sorrow and beauty. Grief and joy are not separate in folk music, mar a bhíonn sa traidisiún féin, and they are not separate here. Language carries its own rhythm. Ní Chatháin’s use of Gaeilge is never forced, never for show. “I’ve always spoken Irish, and so I’ve always sung and written in Irish. And so some songs just come out in Irish, as I find them quite easy. And the lyrical aspect and the filíocht in the language itself I find it really easy.’ Some songs come in Béarla, some in Gaeilge. “It’s a bit Mysterious, ” she says. But ‘Beatha’ had to be as Gaeilge. Domhain. Talamhach. ‘It’s so earthy and just the feeling of the fertility and the soil it just seemed like, “Oh yeah, well, go to my roots, like the Irish to express it. ” Ní Chatháin uses the word Dia throughout the song. “I love the word dia. It’s better for me than God. It means more to me than God.” The influence of sean-nós is never rigid but always present. It shapes the phrasing, the stillness between notes, the weight on a single syllable. Traidisiún mar fhréamh, fiú má tá an toradh nua. And yet the record is not afraid to experiment. With collaborators Matthew Jacobson (drums, percussion) and Seán Mac Erlaine (woodwinds, synth, programming), Ní Chatháin opens into new sonic landscapes. Synth lines ripple throughout the album alongside the clarinet and the piano. This is how folk evolves. Not by breaking from the past, but by letting it breathe, by allowing space for both roots and branches. On stage, the music takes on another life entirely. Sometimes it’s a duo, sometimes a trio, always shifting like the music itself. “ I love being on stage. I don’t know what it is, but it’s like, it’s the most real experience. It’s like you’re sharing a conversation or chat, but something quite, quite a bit deeper. And it’s just such a lovely thing that we get to do.” Ceol beo, ceol fíor. This is also where tradition lives, in the shared moment, the exchange between player and listener, tune and dancer, fidil and breath. Ní Chatháin’s voice shifts low and steady, then rises wild and lyrical. Her fidil moves from lament to laughter, from brón to áthas, with ease. Every song feels rooted in land, talamh beneath the feet, carrying memory and possibility at once. Tá gach rud ceangailte in tradition, nature, emotion, and language. This is the album’s essence. ‘Still A Day’ is not a static folk record. It is a living ecosystem. It carries silence and sound, sean agus nua, brón agus áthas. This is what Inni-K brings: openness without fear, a trust in tradition that does not freeze it, but lets it move and breathe. Agus nuair a chanann sí, we hear it all. The roots of sean-nós. The shimmer of synth. The heartbeat of the fidil. The invisible wisdom of Dia. It is Irish folk music alive in the present tense, luminous, daring, and deeply human. Still A Day is available now on vinyl, CD, and digital formats from www.inni-k.bandcamp. com and all good record stores. Catch Inni-K nationwide on tour from Oct 16th in Dundalk’s Spirit Store with a Dublin date in The Sugar Club on November 8th and Brays Mermaid Theatre on Nov 9th. All ticket info on www.inni-k.com. 17