Reviews of Junior Brother – the alias of County Kerry-born, Dublin-based singer-songwriter Ronan Kealy – tend to focus on his voice. The Last Mixed Tape got close to the mark when they described his 2019 debut Pull the Right Rope as ‘jolting’ and ‘unapologetically raw’, while in an otherwise highly complimentary review of his 2022 album The Great Irish Famine, the Irish Times called his singing ‘comparatively unsophisticated’. Comparative to what, we might ask? Kealy is such a singular artist – and his voice such a unique instrument – that the whole idea of comparison seems to melt away in the face of the elemental force of his songs. That same review drew deserved parallels with Captain Beefheart and Ivor Cutler. Were they ‘unsophisticated’ too? What about Nina Simone, or Ewan MacColl? The point is that Kealy, like those other great singers, is able to walk a vocal tightrope, to strike a balance between control and passion, and that matters far more than any notion of sophistication.
But if we concentrate too much on the medium, we’re in danger of missing the message. Because Kealy, as well as being an incendiary performer, is also an extremely nuanced songwriter. In his work, the political and the personal become enmeshed. This Is My Body, from The Great Irish Famine, dwelt on the neglected subject of the male body and the universal post-Covid decline in health. Last year’s single Take Guilt is a vehement rant against hypocritical thought, bad-faith politics, anti-immigration rhetoric, the historical burden of guilt and a raft of other pertinent subjects. Nothing escapes the lash of Kealy’s tongue, not even himself. Writing about this song and his own privilege, Kealy says, ‘I’m white and male and I have done nothing, but crimes and horrors done in my face’s name require me to take guilt.’
Take Guilt also appears here on The End, the third Junior Brother album, where it is surrounded by ten other like-minded missives. That Kealy has grown in stature as a songwriter since his earlier albums is immediately clear, not just from Take Guilt’s lyrical reach, but from its spine-tingling arrangement and melodic thrust. There is a single-minded defiance about it – a full-throttle acoustic strum, drums that practically drag you along for the ride – and despite the lyrics, there is something almost ecstatic about the way the song is delivered.
If you didn’t get it from Take Guilt, then The End is bulging with plenty more clues that Kealy has no time for bigotry and the pervasive and growing influence of the far right. Small Violence takes aim at cowardly whisperers who spread hate ‘from foul mouth to unhappy man’. In strikingly metaphorical language, it paints a very literal picture of how hate speech can multiply and move from the chat rooms to the streets. There is a freaky, forbidding feel to the music thanks to crashing, stop-start percussion and a melody that teeters constantly on the edge of discordance. The song features a devilish, descending riff inspired by the classic folk horror film The Blood on Satan’s Claw, which is fitting given that film’s trajectory from insidious words to cultish behaviour to murderous violence.
Kealy sustains the eeriness throughout The End, partly due to the album’s underlying central motif of fairy forts, the earth mounds that scatter the Irish countryside and play an important part in the country’s folklore. The album’s opening track, Welcome To My Mountain, was inspired by a first-hand account of a man becoming lost in one of the fairy forts. A circling flute motif paves the way for an uncanny folk-rock stomp punctuated by moments of near silence and Kealy’s strange, slightly disembodied singing. It’s twisty and labyrinthine, full of unexpected turns, shifting time signatures and a sense of hallucinogenic dread.
Kealy’s real genius lies in the way he links these ancient themes to our contemporary plight. Throughout The End, there are hints – some subtle and some not so much – that we are losing our way like the protagonist of Welcome To My Mountain in his fairy fort. A Lot of Love picks up the theme from the point of view of the good guys, marrying uptight, tense verses with a chorus that has the shouty simplicity of a football ground chant. The immediacy conceals hidden depths, as is often the case in Junior Brother songs. Here, Kealy admits that even love can have its dangers, and that being on the side of good doesn’t necessarily mean you are going to win.
‘There is no weekend, just days and days and days,’ he sings on the short, punchy Week End, a song that moves deftly from punkish energy to melodic Irish folk, while Start Digging juxtaposes choppiness and wooziness, and adds a semi-spoken vocal that sounds insane until you listen to the lyrics (and justifies some of the Ivor Cutler comparisons). Kealy can make the traditional instruments of Irish folk music – whistle, accordion, mandolin, drum – sound like birdsong or like armageddon, sometimes within the bounds of a single song, and when you add his glorious rants to the equation, the results can be thrilling.
The Kerry Polka does what it says on the tin, but not in a way you’d expect: it has a driving, almost minimal rhythmic presence, moving the song in complex directions. Kealy is a fan of many of the current crop of experimental rock/post-punk bands like Black Midi (with whom he shares a producer, the inimitable John ‘Spud’ Murphy), and it really shows in the way he builds narrative into his songs musically as well as lyrically, keeping things dense when he needs to but always moving them along at a lively pace. He can be more stripped-back too, like on Old Bell, a rickety lo-fi folk song that grapples with impending death.
The End is an album of difficult subjects, and Kealy broaches them with admirable candour. He’s not scared of using specific and highly personal details to make universal points (see Today My Uncle Told Me, which tackles the rise of extreme right-wing dogma close to home). Neither is he scared of using rawness and harshness and noise to make his point. Plague Medal is almost grotesque in its imagery, yet it remains entirely compelling. The harshness is not unsophisticated; it’s highly accomplished, and Kealy knows how to use it to draw us in and to make us listen more intently. On The End’s stunning, atmospheric, glistening closing track, New Road, he takes us on a literal journey (one that perhaps takes us back to the fairy forts) and we can do nothing other than hang on his every word, words that slip from calm to fervid to agonised. It’s a journey we are willing to take again and again.
The End (September 5th, 2025) Strap Originals
Pre-Order The End: https://orcd.co/jbtheend
Tour Dates
July
31 WATERFORD All Together Now Festival, Hidden Stage
August
1 WATERFORD All Together Now Festival, Arcadia
9 ANTRIM Under the Drum Festival NI
12 EDINBURGH La Belle Angelle supporting Peter O’Doherty
13 EDINBURGH La Belle Angelle supporting Peter O’Doherty
29 DORSET End of the Road Festival with the Incredible String Band
September
12 CORK The Pav Sounds From a Safe Harbour Festival Album Launch
13 DUBLIN Grand Social Club Album Launch (with support from Madra Salach)
14 DUBLIN Grand Social Club Album Launch (with support from Anenome)
20 LONDON South Bank Centre QE Hall with the Incredible String Band
21 DROGHEDA Vantastival Festival
October
10 TRALEE LASTA Festival Síamsa Tire
November
9 CLONAKILTY DeBarras Samhain Festival
14 GALWAY Róisín Dubh
15 LIMERICK Upstairs at Dolan’s Warehouse
21 DERRY Sandinos
22 BANGOR Open House Festival
23 DUNDALK Spirit Store
26 BIRMINGHAM The Victoria
27 LONDON Hootananny
28 LEEDS Hyde Park Book Club
29 MANCHESTER Gulliver’s
Tickets available at: https://www.juniorbrother.com/tour