Oisín Leech’s music is so delicate that you have to stop what you’re doing, put down your pint, and close your eyes. His album, Cold Sea, touches on everything—love, loss, mortality—and then lands on the other side, somewhere close to joy. Often, we have no clue where we’re going, only that time is passing.
Cold Sea, with its subtle ruminations and synthy drone, is a tour de force that blends tradition with something more futuristic and less straightforward. Last week, Uncut Magazine ranked it 29th in their Essential Albums for 2024. It is undoubtedly a contender for the RTE Radio 1 Folk Awards early next year.
For those coming in from the rain, there was something deeply reassuring about Caoimhín Ó Raghallaigh on his ten-string fiddle to set the tone. Ó Raghallaigh, who plays with The Gloaming amongst others, was a class act, his traditional reels blending with percussive bowing and harmonic screeches.
True to form, Leech began with unerring simplicity, back where the tunes first began. It took no longer than One Hill Further and Empire to set sail. By the first four notes of October Sun, we were lulled into his realm, his sound clearing something unnameable. If he wasn’t riffing onstage with double bassist Graham Heaney, he was paring-down the sound to within an inch of its life.
The place was in great form—hushed, almost jokey—with the stage resembling an ark at times, with Leech at the helm, steering us this way and that. Then he regaled us about how Colour of the Rain was conceived while watching Match of the Day—a lovely moment from an artist at peace with the world.
His playlists for Caravan Radio on RTE Radio1 this summer will live long in the memory. These evening programmes, like his music, suggested one who has been gathering records all his life, weighing up this and that, living in London, busking, reading, getting wonderfully lost.
His lyrics are impeccable – sharp as you like, with the kind of wrought simplicity you rarely find these days. In Colour of the Rain, we have ‘The water’s carpentry / it cut the open sea’, where songwriter-as-seafarer parses the tides for inspiration. The sea is central to Leech’s identity, his canvas – both a symbol of, and a literal means for, invocation. October Sun aches for spiritual consolation: ‘Like the reeds on the hill / the wind coming in / I’m closer now / than I’ve ever been’.
There was always a clear sense of what the music meant. Often, his voice would morph into the seascape: the sound of the bowing bass, guitar played through a chorus pedal, a salient pluck. There was a lovely moment in Malin Gale where the double bass held us all up like a ship. Graham Heaney on double bass was imperious throughout: ear to the ground, like a folk Ray Brown.
By the end, Caoimhín Ó Raghallaigh joined in for some tunes. The group’s rendition of Wild Mountain Thyme had the audience singing in the choruses – Oisín Leech was in his element throughout, deferring to the traditions that taught him so well. He’s that rare thing – a songwriter of the highest order who is also breathtakingly humble.