Ye Vagabonds release the official video to Go Away and Come Back Hither today, a single taken from their 2022 album Nine Waves.
Last year, following their tour of Ireland’s inland waterways for their All Boats Rise project, Ye Vagabonds, brothers Brían and Diarmuid MacGloinn released their third record, the gorgeously restrained Nine Waves. A Featured Album of the Month on Folk Radio, David Weir concludes his review:
“Reflective and reverent, with Nine Waves Ye Vagabonds prove once again to be at the forefront of an ever-evolving, flourishing Irish folk scene and have done so in the most understated and inspired fashion imaginable.”
Ye Vagabonds released no music videos in the lead-up to that album, instead opting for a longer form film that showcases each track on the album. Go Away and Come Back Hither is presented as the only stand-alone video release before the full film releases on October 17th 2023. The project is a collaboration between the band and film production company Tiny Ark.
Nine Waves is a visual postcard of the sound world that the album inhabits, primarily based within a derelict building in Dublin and on location on the island of Arranmore, off the coast of Donegal.
Go Away and Come Back Hither features regular collaborators Kate Ellis & Caimin Gilmore (watch them in ‘A City Under Quiet Lights‘) of Crash Ensemble as guest musicians, alongside a cast of dancers Stephanie Dufresne and Cristian Enmanuel Dirocie.
After reviewing Nine Waves, we also interviewed Ye Vagabonds (read it here), in which Diarmuid spoke about Go Away and Come Back Hither:
That one, the chorus, had been floating around as a couple of words and a bit of a melody, as a thing that we intended to write for years. Any relationship that either of us has been in during that time has involved a lot of comings and goings because we travel so much. So, it’s a love song about that feeling of absence and then being reunited. The other side to it is that when my wife and I started seeing each other in the early days of our relationship, we were both away for prolonged periods of time. We would send each other these long messages that, in hindsight, could be seen as like love letters nearly, talking about all kinds of philosophical things. One or two of the verses are direct references to that.
She’s Muslim, and the first verse has that line “we met before creation,” which is a thing that Sufis believe that all souls knew each other before creation, especially the souls of people who are close to each other in life. But they knew each other in some kind of swirling soul world before they arrived here, which I thought was beautiful, whether it’s something that you can believe in literally or not. Then the last verse references another conversation as well. We were talking about stars and how it’s only the tiniest pinprick of a star that’s visible: “the greater part of any love lies somewhere out of sight / astronomers attending to the paths of distant lights.”
FILM CREDITS
Director – Alex Delap
Producer – Liam Harkin
Assistant Producer – Daniel Moynihan
Director of Photography – Leon Forristal
C-Cam – Saoirse Johnson Gaffey
1st AC – Colm Moore & Saoirse Johnston Gaffey Drone Operator – Colm Moore
Editor – Ronan Fox
Colourist – Leon Forristal
Audio Mix – Briìan Mac Gloinn
Musicians
Briìan Mac Gloinn Diarmuid Mac Gloinn Alain McFadden
Ye Vagabonds headline the National Concert Hall as part of Tradition Now this Saturday, 7th October 2023. Tickets available at www.nch.ie
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