Today marks the release of Kíla frontman Rónán Ó Snodaigh‘s new album Tá Go Maith. While that’s a familiar Irish phrase, the album’s press draws focus on being grateful. “It’s not finding gratitude that matters most; it’s remembering to look in the first place. Sometimes life lands a really mean punch in the gut and it feels like there’s nothing to be grateful for. Guess what? It doesn’t matter. You don’t have to find anything. It’s the searching that counts”.
Rónán recalls a valuable lesson learned in the pandemic lockdown. “Gratefulness doesn’t just make you happy — it creates a positive feedback loop in your relationships. So express that gratitude to the people you care about.” It was in the soil of this powerful sentiment that ‘Tá Go Maith’, a collection of new solo works by Ó Snodaigh and produced by Myles O’Reilly, began to propagate.
Now that last name, Myles O’Reilly, is a person we’re used to not seeing. He’s more often found behind the camera filming some of the brightest new names in Irish music or creating incredible documentaries. That said, he’s also a musician and composer. I think it was over lockdown that I began to see more videos of him performing on a Moog and setting music to film so it was only a little surprise to hear he’d teamed up with Rónán on this album.
In a spur of the moment decision informed by another valuable lesson learned in lockdown, that isolation and a generosity of time can do much to fuel the creative mind, Rónán Ó Snodaigh and Myles O’Reilly filled a car with musical instruments and decamped to a remote cottage in Maynooth. Bringing with him a canon of new lyrics, inspired by deep and newfound connections with time, place, family, friends and… gratitude, Rónán found a nest in O’Reilly’s minimal ambient textures, to lay some musical ideas. In the ethereal sound grown to characterise Myles ambient music moniker [Indistinct Chatter], songs were hatched.
These two have been spreading peace and warmth in all that they do for many years, together they share a deep-rooted gracefulness that comes across in their work and shines clearly through their music. Feast your eyes and ears on Tá’n t’Ádh Liom, the first single from the album Tá Go Maith:
Tá Go Maith is released digitally today via Arbutus Yarns Recording Company
Get the album on Bandcamp: https://ronanosnodaigh.bandcamp.com/album/t-go-maith
https://www.ronanosnodaigh.ie/