Tag: Ruth O’Mahoney-Brady

What a difference a year or so can make, as Lemoncello triptoe through a transportive beautiful dream, that may or not be real. The Dublin duo of Laura Quirke and Claire Kinsella made many new friends with their chamber folk fired eponymous first, their quirky take on modern life, channelling, musically, the fumes of the tradition, if also embracing lyrical ideas and idioms totally unfamiliar therein. Broadly, an acoustic duo, two voices, cello and guitar came together over a set of deceptively light arrangements. Sometimes a little too deceptively light at times, this release sees them embrace more the opportunities a modern studio can offer, and, in a lazy alliterative leap, become, sonically at least, more coven than convent. 

Guided by co-producer, Ruth O’Mahoney-Brady, that self-same grasp of making the personal become precariously public, with confidences shared and emotions inhabited, is rendered more into a sense of ceremony, involving clever application of electronic layering and beats. Yet the organic heart remains, glowing through, a grounding for all the electrics. This is exemplified by the rich orchestral drone of the brief instrumental opener, ‘Clear Eyes Open Ready’, a swoopy swirl of strings that drifts off gently, like the wane of an air raid siren, to become the recent single, ‘Articulate Animal’, where vocals lead an exploration into trip hop central. Mesmerising on first listen, it is compellingly siren-esque, drawing you in. 

‘At The Edge’ repeats like a mantra, the two voices slotting alongside each other with laser guided accuracy, the ambience all of a Donegal raga. Quirke is the principal songwriter, a self-taught guitarist and takes the vocal leads for Kinsella to find, with her often echo-laden harmonies, whilst simultaneously chopping cello textures on and around any melody line. ‘Karaoke Night’, next, comes over as a part-remembered dream, Quirke invoking the outcome of said night over a moody shimmer of strings, allied to a slow pulse of electronic percussion. The tune twists and turns, embedding itself, as layers build up behind the detached vocal. It is a winner, with a lush epilogue of strings. 

‘Meet Me Half Way ‘drops back with gentle guitar. With a gentler build this time, the cello glides and glissands gloriously. A distant memory of Dolores O’Riordan hovers within Quirke’s tone, and that sense of disconnection, of dreamscape is still writ large. An achingly sad song calling out for the missing connection, ‘Tomorrow Nostalgia’ returns to the trippy hippy ambience of beats and voices, where a borderline balefulness is enhanced by the all-encompassing studio FX. A bizarre notion seeps in, of this is how Charm Of Finches might sound, were they to translate their Hanging Rock schtick to a Bristol warehouse, by way of an after-hours Dublin rave at dawn. This is not a bad thing. 

‘Unfinished Business’ is then a languorously picked pass-agg provocation, a call to possibly the same protagonist of ‘Meet Me Half Way’. Ripples of piano float enticingly through this one, as a backdrop of choral vocals and a wavy wall of cellos sugar coat the challenge. ‘Misadventure’ might be just that, initially a quiet confessional in the crypt, the harmonies a keen and sharp as mustard, pizzicato cello notes adding some ballast, before bowing delivers the feel of a swaying silver band, a returning piano offering some triumphant balance. 

‘White Flag’ sets up the realisation that these ten songs are an ongoing dialogue, a narrative in progress. Almost acapella, with minimal guitar, it is a lamenting keen of, possibly, contrition, equally well possibly not. After all, with the earlier lyric: “Do not listen to the words I say, listen only to the tone of them “, this is Quirke’s MO. Either way, it is a gorgeous listen, as clashes of cymbal underline the dilemma….. “Holding my/your white flag, beating you/me to a pulp with it.” That air-raid siren is then back to seal that image, a lighter and brighter dawn then offered by the title track, replete with added birdsong. A simpler and more serene sensibility, it closes the set both satisfactorily and succinctly, albeit with a postscript coda of discordant dystopia. Class! 

Seuras Og 

Artists’ website: www.lemoncelloireland.com 

‘Articulate Animal’ – official video: