Album Review: Ye Vagabonds, ‘All Tied Together’
Swirling and cinematic, Ye Vagabonds’ fifth album All Tied Together travels gracefully through time and space, evoking loss and longing, beauty and melancholy, and the power of place. Brothers Brian and Diamuid Mac Gloinn gathered with producer Philip Weinrobe and an ensemble of players including multi-instrumentalist Shahzad Ismaily and Sam Amidon in a house in Galway to produce an intimate live recording that invites listeners right into the studio with them.
The album opens with the spaciously unfolding “On Sitric Road,” a poignant remembrance of the raggedness and the glories of busking and the colorful characters inhabiting the scene: “I remember that first evening / Singing John Prine ‘til dawn / Round the iron stove on Sitric Road / With my big wool coat on.” Spry fiddling propels the minor chord lament “The Flood,” a lilting paean that evokes the ways that unexpected waves of despair and gloom can wash over individuals and communities, often destroying them. On “Danny,” an ode to a young man constantly on the run, a swelling mix of synths, cello, and guitars creates an atmospheric and admiring celebration of a life of dogged and improbable survival. Cascading guitar picking washes blended with showers of synths and keys flow under the Mac Gloinns’ waterfall of harmonies on the gorgeous poem to home, “This is Where the Heart Lies.” The bright “Four Walls,” with its sonic resemblance to “Our House,” captures the longing for a home of one’s own—“we’ll find our way/to our own four walls.” The circling rhythms of the love song “Young Again” celebrate lovers growing old together, looking back with no regrets. The album closes with the luminous “We Always Forget About the Rain,” whose transcendent vocals and choral harmonies hail the power of song in facing and overcoming the inevitabilities of life.
Listening to All Tied Together is like sitting in the room with friends and singing about the ups and downs of life and drinking, crying, laughing, and singing with the band.
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All Tied Together is available HERE.
