Landless

Landless are: Lily Power, Méabh Meir, Ruth Clinton and Sinéad Lynch.
The Irish quartet sings centuries old ballads as well as more recently penned folk songs.
Sometimes unaccompanied and at times with subtle instrumentation, their vocally rich music is dark and patient; spellbinding and gorgeous.

Lúireach is their second album and as with their acclaimed debut Bleaching Bones (2018), it is produced by John ‘Spud’ Murphy, known for his work with artists such as Lankum and ØXN. Lúireach sees the quartet adding sparingly-used instrumentation – Ruth’s aching pump organ on Death & The Lady, Méabh’s shruti box on Ej Husari, Lankum’s Cormac MacDiarmada on fiddle, viola and banjo throughout, even some mournful trombone from Alex Borwick on The Newry Highwayman. Some of these songs are centuries old, some remarkably recent, yet when sung by Landless, they all sound timeless

and eternal. The songs for the album were gathered over a number of years, Ruth explains, and while the melody and lyrics are paramount, there is a common theme for many of the inclusions. “Frequently in traditional songs women are described as a passive love interest, in terms of their relationship to a male character. It is refreshing to find songs that challenge this power dynamic, but we are not totally hard-line about it, and sing plenty of old-fashioned love songs.”