Anglo-Irish quartet The Haar made quite a splash on Folk Radio UK with their self-titled 2020 debut. The collective force behind The Haar are fiddle player Adam Summerhayes, bodhrán player Cormac Byrne, accordionist Murray Grainger and Irish singer Molly Donnery. At that point, we had already experienced the improvisational skills of some of these players with Cormac and Adam’s Stone Soup and Adam and Murray’s Ciderhouse Rebellion project and their debut Untold. With The Haar, that spontaneity is maintained, their songs recorded in a single take, no one song to be repeated in exactly the same way. That said, nothing quite prepared us for what followed. In his review of that debut offering, Glenn Kimpton concludes:
The Haar is also a very evocative record, bringing senses of the pain and futility of war and the salt of the ocean, as well as the beauty of the land and the strength of human relationships through its words and music. We need more music like this; spontaneous, alive and affecting, The Haar will take you on a journey and have you appreciating the purest of life’s pleasures. Wonderful stuff.
On Friday, 29th April, they return with their highly anticipated second album, Where Old Ghosts Meet, which promises more magic across eight tracks that grew from a desire to explore old favourites, to dig into traditional Irish gems for new inspiration and insights and intuitively follow the spark of new ideas.
Their first album single ‘Wild Rover’ is a case in point, fittingly released tomorrow (17th March) in time for St Patrick’s Day. Not for The Haar, the bonhomie of The Dubliner. The band were struck by the idea that the prodigal son’s triumphant return, pockets laden with gold, might not be something that endeared him to everyone in the community that he returned to – jealousy, envy, and covetousness are easy to imagine. The greedy landlady suddenly gets an extra gleam in her eye in the lamplit gloom of that dockyard tavern. An additional dark verse by Summerhayes gives the final refrains a new poignancy, turning the story on its head. Molly sang a few experimental bars in a minor key, Cormac added a few quietly ominous strikes, and the band fell in love with the feel. Adam and Murray found a dark sound, imbued with hints of Arabic and klezmer music. Deciding that Molly would start alone, they hit record, and this is the result.
The Haar’s Wild Rover serves as a potent lesson to our extravagantly consuming society in the wake of current global environmental destruction. We meet the Wild Rover as he reaches a critical time, faced with the opportunity to turn his back on excessive consumption and face up to his past before he loses everything. Vowing to change and knowing he must, the lure of excess proves too strong a lust. But continuing profligacy and extravagance come at a cost. He succumbs once again when so close to change, and the prodigal son pays the ultimate price for his ways. An opportunity has been missed, never to return… “never no more.”
For the video, Molly came up with the concept and film, which features the beautiful dancing of Grace Doyle Flaherty.
Wild Rover will be released across all digital platforms on St Patrick’s Day – Thurs 17th March.
The single is also available to download when you pre-order Where Old Ghosts Meet via Bandcamp:
https://thehaar.bandcamp.com/