134: Alannah Thornburgh - Hare Song (Ft. Laura Quirke)

tom johnson

13 Feb 2025 — 2 min read

In yesterday's post, on Ben Kweller and record collections as friendships, I touched briefly on, not only music discovery, but finding the gossamer threads that exist artists, producers, labels; the collective, shifting energy greater than the sum of its parts.

I spent the winter lost in the work of Joshua Burnside, a wonderful singer-songwriter from Northern Ireland that I'd glanced at previously but suddenly couldn't stop listening to. Joshua's new album is released in a couple of weeks and I really can't recommend it enough.

Through Joshua's work I came to know the miraculous voice of Laura Quirke, whose own band Lemoncello deal in similarly enriching folk music, and supported Joshua last month ahead of another tour support stint with Fionn Regan this coming Spring.

Through Laura's work I discovered Alannah Thornburgh, a multi-instrumentalist from "the wild west of Ireland" who has just released a brand new collection of songs "inspired by the rich tradition of fairy folklore & mythology in rural Ireland, specifically my native Co. Mayo."

Led chiefly by Alannah's gorgeous harp, all of the songs here find her joined with a guest player, who collectively add saxophone, clarinet, as well as flushes of percussion. Suitably, for my analogous intro, Joshua Burnside guests here, as does Laura Quirke, both of whom add vocals to the album's attentive centre-point: 'Hare Song'.

Joshua's voice remains mostly hidden in the shadows, glimpsed in the quiet embers, while Laura takes the lead, her fascinating voice a compelling counterpart to Alannah's beautiful playing, all gentle and magic and full of light.

It was my greatest joy to spend time interviewing close to 50 storytellers, historians, family & friends and local characters on the topic of fairy folklore & mythology, and compose a tune in response. Snippets of some of these conversations can be heard interspersed throughout the album.

Shapeshifter is out now, available via Bandcamp

three / six / five is a daily music-sharing project from gold flake paint; read more about the idea here

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