Tales of fortitude and resilience, endurance and grit fuel this exceptional concept album from the singer, flute and whistle player and composer Nuala Kennedy. Shorelines is a collection of tales of women who run the gamut from plain survival to utter triumph in the face of life’s adversities, with tales that cross the centuries and the oceans with the ease of a bird on the wing.
A maritime theme is woven through these nine beautifully curated tracks, which include Saltwater and Flow, a humdinger of a tune pair that she composed. Fittingly, Kennedy’s freewheeling flute style propels these melodies into the wide blue yonder, with equally fine accompaniment from Tara Breen on fiddle and Tony Byrne on guitar. Saltwater and Flow resolve into a perfectly paired, intimate reading of the children’s song Cúcúín, with Kennedy’s flute making way for her sweet vocals. There are surprising echoes in that resolution of what Van Morrison used to do in his heyday, the musicians floating seamlessly in unison into a dreamlike state.
Wake, another of Kennedy’s own tunes, is an air inspired by a boat journey that seems to be on intimate terms with life’s bigger themes, with perfectly pitched accompaniment from Breen on fiddle and Caoimhín Vallely on piano. This is a tune that carries echoes of the late Clare fiddle and concertina player Eileen Galvin, whose music Kennedy discovered during a lockdown project.
The next tune set, Sea Reels, magically captures the unfettered energy of live performance, with Kennedy, Byrne and Breen finding purchase in a trio of reels, two of which are, again, Kennedy’s own.
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The sense of flawless cohesion in Kennedy’s song choices is striking. She takes Died for Love and transforms it into a tale more tragic and wistful, with Byrne and Breen lending arrangements that somehow suggest an Irish companion piece to Ry Cooder’s soundtrack for Paris, Texas. Fascinating, too, to hear her weave those iconic lines, “Go dig my grave, dig it long and deep,” so recently taken by the scruff of the neck by Radie Peat and Lankum, striking her own inimitable tone and rendering this song anew yet again.
Marguerite, spanning the generations, tells of the odyssey of Marguerite de La Rocque de Roberval, a 16th-century aristocrat marooned on the Isle of Demons, off the east coast of Canada. It is a contemporary song that profits from Kennedy’s attentive arrangements.
To dedicate an album to songs and tunes inspired by and about women is a joy to behold, bolstered as it is by such inventive arrangements. Todd Sickafoose’s spacious production lends further to the sense of wide open horizons that characterises this timeless collection.
