Lemoncello release Meet Me Halfway today via Claddagh Records, their first new music since last year’s self-titled debut album. The Irish indie-folk duo of Laura Quirke (guitar/vocals) and Claire Kinsella (cello/vocals) return with a six-minute meditation on connection and distance that feels both intimate and expansive.
Written during an artist residency in a cabin perched on a clifftop overlooking the Skellig Islands off Kerry’s southwest coast, Meet Me Halfway emerged from a period of isolation and contemplation. The duo later recorded the track with co-producer Ruth O’Mahony-Brady (Lisa O’Neill, Gorillaz) in a studio housed in converted horse stables in Cabinteely.
The single unfolds with sparse guitar and voice, while strings hover at its edges like a distant ache. Lemoncello place their lyrics firmly at the forefront, exploring the peculiar modern paradox of feeling simultaneously connected and isolated: “To be so connected / And yet so disconnected / What’s the point in speaking / With so much left understood.”
It’s a marked evolution from their 2024 debut, which KLOF Mag’s Danny Neill praised, noting “Lemoncello are really going places musically, and this is one journey we should all hitch a ride on.” Meet Me Halfway confirms that trajectory, lingering in the quiet spaces between words and saying as much through absence as through sound.
The accompanying visualiser enhances the track’s contemplative atmosphere, matching the song’s exploration of vulnerability and the mutual effort required to sustain connection in fractured times. Where their debut established Lemoncello as artists worth watching, Meet Me Halfway positions them as essential voices in contemporary Irish folk, unafraid to sit with discomfort and emotional complexity.
Out now via Claddagh Records.
Stream: https://lemoncello.lnk.to/MMHW
