The mission statement of Bring Your Own Hammer is simple: to reinterpret historical material in the form of song. Simple, perhaps, but also infinitely broad in its scope. The telling phrase here is that innocent-looking infinitive ‘to reinterpret’: it allows for almost total creative freedom, and that is what makes this project so exciting. It involves a long and distinguished roll-call of musicians – Irish musicians, or ones with links to Ireland – and it asks them to retell stories from the darker recesses of history. This is not a band, or even a collective, though there are aspects of collaboration, not just between musicians but with historians and folklorists too. The musicians involved come from the disparate worlds of traditional folk, pop, alternative rock, and seemingly all points in between.
The result is From the Tombs, a purposefully expansive twenty-one-track double album that celebrates the individuality of its contributors and the oral tradition that brings them all together. It’s a tradition they are seeking to remake or re-energise, giving voice to the strange characters that people our towns and cities. So we get Sean O’Hagan (of Microdisney, High Llamas and Stereolab fame) and Adrian Crowley’s short but powerful Vagabond Song, on which Crowley comes across like an Irish Tom Waits, down at heel but blessed with the gift of the gab, while O’Hagan provides shifting, creaking electronics and ghostly piano. On the same side is another Crowley song, this one in collaboration with maxo, who provides uilleann pipes. A typically understated vocal performance masks a surreal narrative about a witch who turned a chicken into the head of a pig and another who sucked milk from cows while in the form of a hare. A powerful steel-string strum and melodic pipe coda give the song a strange and irresistible force
The album is structured as four ‘nights’, one for each side of vinyl, and those two Crowley songs both feature on the first night – subtitled ‘from the sessions’ – which deals with unusual crimes and often unjust courts. Here too is Cian Nugent’s instrumental opener Asking Alms, built around a slow, sinewy electric guitar which nods to Nugent’s psych-folk past; and Mike Smalle and Kelsey Michael’s Ragged Red Shirt, an emotive sweep of folk-pop with cavernous percussion and swooning vocals, which tells the story of a man convicted of assault after defending himself from the taunts of townsfolk who accused him of selling his wife. Cellist Audrey Riley and guitarist James Woodrow contribute the near-ambient A.M., an austere but beautiful meditation on the complex needs and obsessions of a girl in a Co. Monaghan reformatory.
Some big names from the indie and alt-rock world feature on side two, which explores stories from or about America. Luke Haines joins Mike Smalle for The Black Maria, O, lending his distinctive gruff semi-whispered vocals to a late-C19th song by Irish-American lyricist Edward Harrigan, and Smalle enlists the help of Modettes singer June Miles-Kingston and Suede guitarist Bernard Butler, amongst others, on the surprisingly upbeat title-track. It’s a perfectly crafted slice of folky indie-pop, with the welcome addition of strings and brass, somehow finding hope and positivity in the story of a woman accused of infanticide. Also on the America side are two songs featuring Marcus Holdaway: Powerplays details the Argentine presidential elections of 1874, and the role played by Irish doctor and anarchist John Creaghe. Holdaway’s surprising musical combinations – electronically treated vocals and programmed drums meet accordion and organ – make for an intriguing recipe, in which folk and Latin American music come into contact with contemporary R&B and bedroom pop. Holdaway’s other contribution is Sing a Song to Sing Sing, where he adds cello to John Carter Woods’ guitar and electronics for an instrumental that contrasts spiky programmed percussion and a billowing melodicism.
A highlight of the American section is Dublin-based experimentalist Miriam Ingram’s Pale Blue Dress, which sounds almost like a cut-up Joni Mitchell. Seán Mac Erlaine’s flute and synth add a further Eno-esque dimension. Another deliciously downbeat Adrian Crowley song, Quinn the Adventurer, rounds the side off in style, hitting the sweet spot between Bill Callahan, Tindersticks and Nick Cave with a song about a collection of contraband shrunken heads.
The third side, From the Assizes, kicks off with Tony Higgins’ Carrickshock (A Desperate Deed of Blood) in which a traditional Irish whistle tune (played here by Michael Walsh) gives way to a chaotic approximation of a riot. SJ McArdle and Lisa Lambe provide In the Dark, a gentle, pastoral duet augmented by bouzouki and mandolin, whose lyrics tease out a knotty quarrel between an odd Fermanagh couple, while Brigid Mae Power gives us a characteristically wild, clear vocal performance on I Swear to You, her crystalline voice given space to roam free by Linda Buckley’s subtle, electronic embellishments. Michael J. Sheehy brings his gothic alt-country to Luck, a heartbreaking tale of insanity and infanticide. It pairs perfectly with Lavinia Blackwall and Neil Farrell’s The Cruel Father, a dramatic tale of filial abandonment that sounds like the best number from some great lost folk opera. Former Trembling Bells singer Blackwall has a voice perfectly suited for this kind of thing, and her performance here is typically jaw-dropping. In sharp and effective contrast is Vane Tempest (Smalle and Holdaway), which sounds like the creepy nocturnal flipside of some 60s sunshine pop single. It sounds like The Move or The Pretty Things if they’d been left in a damp hole to die: the perfect vibe for a song about the slimiest of con men.
The fourth and final side of From the Tombs invites us to think about departure and belonging. It features another Michael J. Sheehy song, We Were Bound, on which Anne Gilpin takes up lead vocal duties. Its gentle, moving melody makes clear the difficulties of emigration and the proud spirit of those who chose to leave the land of their birth. Fergal Lawler’s The Elphinstone Voyage (inspired by the trial and transportation of two notorious Waterford criminals) is an ambient instrumental full of foreboding, and Inni-K’s Na Connerys is a moving and beautifully performed song in the traditional unaccompanied Sean-nós style. The album ends with its most unconventional statement: the spoken-word Faultlines, a lengthy conversation between father and son (the parts here are taken by Michael Walsh, who sings, and Not Quite Light, aka Simon Buckley, who provides narration). The pair also trade traditional whistle and electronic soundscapes, bringing the project’s synthesis of past and present to completion. The narrative itself is a desolate examination of family ties, nostalgia and estrangement, and an indictment of war.
So much creative work has gone into From the Tombs, and by so many different artists, that it is impossible to do it justice in a single review. Each song opens a new door to a previously obscure episode of history, and each deserves the kind of deep interaction that goes well beyond its run-time. Whether Bring Your Own Hammer is a collective, a band or, as they would have it, a faction, they have created an album of almost bewildering scope, full of complex morality and poignant emotional weight, and anchored by consistently great songs.
From the Tombs (November 13th, 2027) Bring Your Own Hammer in partnership with Dimple Discs
Order (Digital / CD / LP): https://orcd.co/byohfromthetombsalbum
Track listing
From the Sessions
Asking Alms – Cian Nugent
Ragged Red Shirt – Mike Smalle and Kelsey Michael
The Butter Witch – Adrian Crowley and maxo
A.M. – Audrey Riley with James Woodrow
Vagabond Song – Adrian Crowley and Sean O’Hagan
From the Americas
From the Tombs – Mike Smalle and June Miles-Kingston, with Bernard Butler, Terry Edwards, Marcus Holdaway and Fergal Lawler
The Black Maria, O – Luke Haines and Mike Smalle
Sing a Song to Sing Sing – John Carter Wood with Marcus Holdaway
Powerplays – Marcus Holdaway
Pale Blue Dress – Miriam Ingram with Seán Mac Erlaine
Quinn the Adventurer – Adrian Crowley
From the assizes
Carrickshock (A Brief but Desperate Deed of Blood) – Tony Higgins with Hugh Bunker, Damian O’Neill and Michael Walsh
In the Dark – SJ McArdle and Lisa Lambe
I Swear to You – Brigid Mae Power and Linda Buckley
Luck – Michael J. Sheehy
The Cruel Father – Lavinia Blackwall and Neil Farrell with SJ McArdle
Vane Tempest – Mike Smalle and Marcus Holdaway
From the Island
The Elphinstone Voyage – Fergal Lawler
We Were Bound – Michael J. Sheehy and Anne Gilpin
Na Connerys – Inni-K
Faultlines – Michael Walsh and NQL
Bring Your Own Hammer: https://byohammer.com/