Nuala Kennedy
Shorelines
Under the Arch Records
7 July 2023
Irish traditional singer and flute player Nuala Kennedy’s new solo album Shorelines is a gem. At its core are a set of songs of love and loss related to the sea and journeys by sea, that explore the representation of women in traditional folk song. Nuala chose the songs because they highlight the resilience and “dynamic, proactive personality” of the female protagonists, and mixed in with them are mostly self-composed tunes inspired by the coast of Clare, where she moved to in 2019.
Shorelines is Nuala Kennedy’s fifth solo album, initially commissioned as a concept piece by Glór Theatre, Ennis, in 2020, written during lockdown, and premiered in October 2021. The album features Tara Breen (Chieftains) on fiddle, Tony Byrne (Danú) on guitar, Moira Smiley (Solas) & Muireann Nic Amhlaoibh on backing vocals, Todd Sickafoose (Anais Mitchell) on bass, and Caoimhín Vallely (Buille) on piano. As a member of the Snowflake Trio, Nuala’s preceding release was Sun Dogs (2019), which “contains a wealth of diverse, nourishing music and is an all-round thing of beauty” (read the review here), and her last solo album was 2016’s Behave The Bravest (read Neil McFadyen’s review here). Nuala is also often to be found performing in The Alt with John Doyle and Eamon O’Leary.
On Sally Sits Weeping, the album’s opening song, the song’s protagonist intends to ‘venture on the watery main’ in the certainty that her ‘false lover,’ who has left her and ‘will weep for me after I’m gone’. There is a captivating sense of the burden of lost love, accentuated by the restrained, almost otherworldly accompaniment on bass, guitar and flute. It is co-joined by Blue Devils’ Jig, named by Nuala for the deep states of melancholy that overcome Ishmael in Moby Dick, although the tune is far from gloomy.
Nuala first heard Sally Sits Weeping sung by Niamh Parsons (Niamh recorded it on her 1999 album Blackbirds & Thrushes). However, Nuala’s version is put together from various sources, omitting the common dream sequence. The song has been collected widely, with various titles, including Once I Had a Sweetheart and I Once Had a True Love. It has been recorded by, amongst others, Paddy Tunney on his 1965 A Wild Bee’s Nest Topic album, Pentangle on their 1969 Basket Of Light album, and there’s a lovely piano instrumental version by Shirley Collins, accompanied by her sister Dolly on the Fledglin 2002 Within Sound boxset.
I love the way Father Father builds. Nuala sings the first two verses unaccompanied, drawing you entirely into the mood of longing as a woman searches for William, her lost love. There’s a delicate majesty in how the guitar joins from the third verse and then fiddle from the fifth verse. Nuala says in the sleeve notes: “The first part of this melody I learned from Alasdair Roberts, which he got in turn from Shropshire singer Fred Jordan. John Moulden comments that ‘The Fred Jordan tune is a close relative of The Croppy Boy tune aka Cailín Ó Chois tSúire Mé, among the first Irish tunes in the oral tradition to be written down’. I have added to the melody.” It is an arresting version of a song of anguish, given as it unfolds, the woman discovers that William has drowned at sea.
Emigration, most commonly to North America, is a recurring theme in Irish traditional songs, and although often such songs tell of lost love, two of the songs on Shorelines tell of journeys to North America that have happy endings for the lovers involved. Mick Moloney, who sadly died last year, wrote about the story of Irish-American immigration through song in his excellent 2002 book Far From The Shamrock Shore. Mick released a CD of the same name that included Ye Lover’s All; he suggested that Nuala include the song on her album, which she did in his memory, and a very fine version it is. It starts as a story of loss when the woman’s father drives her lover away to Quebec, but she steals five hundred pounds from her father and follows her lover, eventually finding and marrying him, settling in St John. Mick describes in the book how many Irish emigrants chose to go to Quebec rather than the U.S. because it was a considerably cheaper fare.
The Cavan Road, the last track on the album, is a little more straightforward in that after gaining parental consent, the concerned lovers marry, emigrate to ‘Amerikay’ and do well – ‘she has money at her command, the truth to you I’ll tell’. Nuala sings the song beautifully and completely unaccompanied. She says: “I learned this song many years ago from Cathal McConnell after asking him for a song with a happy ending!” She has described Cathal McConnell as her ‘musical mentor’ from when she was learning her craft in Edinburgh (where Cathal has also lived since the early 1970s – read more about those early years in an interview with the late Robin Morton), having moved there from her native Dundalk. She included songs she got from Cathal on her first three solo albums and previously recorded The Cavan Road in 2012 in the band Oirialla with fiddle player Gerry O’Connor, Breton guitarist Gilles Le Bigot, and accordion player Martin Quinn. Cathal included it in his epic 123 song I Have Travelled This Country: Songs of Cathal McConnell (2011) and with the Boys Of The Lough on their 2014 The New Line album.
Whilst songs are at the heart of Shorelines, they are punctuated by Nuala’s tunes which provide a bright and breezy counter to the tales of loss and adversity. They are inspired variously by the music and coast of Brittany, the Clare coast, the village of Troy and the Celtic Colours Festival in Cape Breton, and musician friends. Nuala writes alluring, contemporary-sounding tunes, which often have a slightly cheeky, audacious edge to them. The combination of instruments affords a rounded sound, with sensitive bass adding a fuller dimension but always allowing Nuala’s flute playing to shine.
Any release with Nuala Kennedy’s name on it will be worth our attention, but what makes Shorelines stand out is the cohesive, compelling storytelling that brings a focus to the resilience of the female characters. The accompaniment, arrangement and production (by Nuala and Todd Sickafoose) – provide a rich, subtle frame that lets her vocal and flute playing excel. Nuala’s singing is notable for the clarity of her delivery – every word is crystal clear – and the fine nuances that add up to a consistently absorbing listening experience—an album you don’t want to miss.
Shorelines Kennedy’s fifth solo album will be released on Friday, July 7th, 2023.
it is available to order on Bandcamp here: https://nualakennedy.bandcamp.com/
To see Nuala perform live, check out her touring schedule here: https://www.nualakennedy.com/tour/