About
“The album is unlike anything else, anywhere – taking traditional Irish instruments and stretching them into the beyond.” – HOT PRESS
“Traditional Irish instrumentation is pushed into strange and eerie new climes” – THE QUIETUS
“A giddy marvel” – MOJO
“A skilled recontextualist with a rich, expressive style” – UNCUT
“[an] incomparable, alchemy-inducing sound and uncompromising lyricism” – HOT PRESS
Carefully pushing the boundaries of what modern Irish folk can look and sound like, Junior Brother is an idiosyncratic, challenging, and richly lyrical singer/songwriter from Co. Kerry. His much-anticipated third album, The End is officially out now, via Strap Originals.
Following singles Take Guilt, Small Violence, Welcome To My Mountain and A Lot of Love, this album is set to be a defining release for Junior Brother.
The End is a deeply instinctive yet carefully considered response to the chaos of modern life, with Junior Brother weaving the recent years of upheaval into the eerie folklore of Fairy Forts. These ring-shaped earth mounds, scattered across the Irish countryside, are known to possess an energy that can bewilder, curse, or even lead the unwary astray. Stepping into one is to risk losing yourself—both physically and spiritually. To Junior Brother, this ancient folklore mirrors the disorienting reality of today’s world.
“The sound of the album is supposed to take the organic instruments of Irish traditional music and lift them somewhere else,” Junior Brother explains, “like the otherworldly Irish music sometimes heard from Fairy Forts at twilight on country roads, impossible to recreate upon hearing.” The End captures this essence, blending the raw textures of traditional Irish music with spectral, unearthly elements.
Much of the album’s inspiration was drawn from UCD’s Folklore Collection on duchas.ie, “I delved into the manuscripts—endless eyewitness accounts of Fairy Forts being stepped into and the land altering, the familiar mutating,” Junior Brother shares. “Farmers, teachers, the sober, the smart—all losing their way home one way or the other.” In these uncanny tales of displacement and confusion, he found striking parallels to the instability and distortion of contemporary life.
Alongside the album’s release, Junior Brother has shared the official video for lead single Old Bell. “ ‘Old Bell’ is a song that pushes back against the forces which pull the fit and young into a pit of no return,” he explains. The video sees Junior Brother singing in a forest, among trees which “reach for the sky but are held down by the earth that nourishes them.”
“The dark, straight road can be tough and dull, but the darkness on the other side of the ditch is darker and harder to pull away back from. As the road becomes the hill, go on with your load on your back till you reach the red sky. In any case, we must keep going until we reach the end.”
Thematically, The End explores forces that work against nature (New Road, Welcome to My Mountain), the rise of the far-right (Small Violence, Today My Uncle Told Me), and confrontations with mortality (Old Bell, Start Digging). Through the lens of rural Irish folklore, the album reflects the bewildering madness of the present moment.
“The title The End represents the moment after being led astray, when the grip of madness releases you and you suddenly see your way home,” says Junior Brother. “It may reflect the doom of a world gone mad, but it also represents the end of darkness, and the start of a new road.”
