The development of Ye Vagabonds, as they have shifted from traditional songs to personal portraits, can be tracked in the way All Tied Together creates a dynamic where the MacGloinn brothers are able to merge old and new forms in a most remarkable fashion. Creating an album that bows to the past yet refuses to genuflect, while charting a course toward a vision of everything folk can be represents a stunning achievement.
Staring with the opening track, ‘On Sitric Road’, they deliver a story of living in the squats. Rather than focusing on the roughness, Diarmuid and Brian sing of the joy coming from living together cheered by a sense of community. You can feel the glory of singing John Prine songs around an old iron stove as the guitars gently merge with a synthesizer, forming a sorrowful beauty as they remember, “Feet upon a chair/ Curled up like a newborn child/ Peaking out under your hair/ I felt lucky for a while.”
Opening with joyful sounds, ‘The Flood’ evicts the residents of a similar community, casting them to the waves as the sounds of joy are drowned out by the people left in the wake. Turning joy to sorrow, while still maintaining a sense of how quickly things change. Merging hope and fear, dust with desire, using guitars and accordions, Ye Vagabonds forge unexpected pathways, made all the more remarkable by the fact that the entire album was tracked live from a house in Galway by Philip Weinrobe.
The tales told by the Ma Gloinn brothers bring to life characters from their past. They feel like real people, dealing with a world that often isn’t quite as kind as we would like it to be. ‘Danny’ offers up a song about a young man who turns to selling drugs. It’s a story without a happy ending, yet the song doesn’t sugarcoat coat anything. The end is clearly in sight as they sing, “It was strange to hear him talk/ Until his cheeks were wet/ Did he already know it was the last chance he might get.” As the song ends, there’s a coda bringing listeners back to moments more hopeful and lighter.
These songs cover the most unexpected angles, from an almost Eno-esque love song, ‘Gravity’, where the sounds on synth and bowed bass lead the song away from the folkier qualities one might expect. ‘We Always Forget About the Rain’ offers beautiful harmonies, ethereal cellos, and a haunting final note.
Ye Vagabonds All Tied Together is a piece of work exposing new ground. Raising the game, they find ways to create music that goes beyond the confines of folk to redefine what it means to be alive in the twenty first century, transforming tradition, defying expectations and forging new ground.