DAVE MCNALLY reviews the The Henry Girls' latest CD A Time To Grow
THE Henry Girls, Co. Donegal sisters Karen, Lorna and Joleen McLaughlin, have been making critically acclaimed albums since 2003 and, if you haven’t come across them, A Time To Grow is an engrossing, varied and deeply optimistic place to begin to get acquainted with their music. The sisters are accomplished multi-instrumentalists – there’s harp, banjo, piano, fiddle and more on an assortment of self-written songs and instrumentals.
The title track opens the album, the group’s sparkling signature harmony singing unaccompanied at first, repeating the song’s reflective refrain ‘Let me sit with this, let me take it in, Let me understand it from deep within’. A muted percussive rhythm lends a dream-like edge, ending with a hopeful outlook: ‘And when it’s done, a time to grow, But I’ll grow tall as days grow warmer, And in the light, a time to grow’.
Breathe has a similar theme of personal change – ‘Breathe through it, Let it all go’. Harp and hushed brass create a fitting dreamy, atmospheric backdrop over fabulous swirling harmonies. The thread of positivity continues, touching on those things that help in difficult times – ‘Whispers of tenderness in moments that we share’ and ‘The power of healing by holding someone’s hand’, together with looking beyond the present: ‘Hope in the flowers as the sun begins to shine, it flows in the rivers, and it leaves the past behind’.
The traditional sounding, slow waltz-like Honeybee instrumental has harp and whistle to the fore, morphing into the reel-like politically relevant titled ‘Hard Border’, with added fiddle. The piano-led Inghinidhe na hÉireann is an altogether different compositional prospect, still with some traditional elements, but initially soundtrack like with piano and strings, fiddle taking on the lead role in a second half – the arrangement sounding not dissimilar to Martin Hayes and The Common Ground Ensemble. The title is a reference to the Irish women’s national movement founded at the start of the last century by Maud Gonne, some of whose members went on to participate in the Easter Rising.
The never less than brilliant guest singer Rioghnach Connolly leads off Not Your Fight, a powerful song which seems to allude to the current rise of right-wing, authoritarian movements. It has a fiddle-led driving, brooding, choppy cadence, which builds as bass guitar adds to an almost feverish mood. The strongly implicit message is that while you may imagine ‘it’s not your fight’, it is and should be.
After the wistful, pop-like, strummed banjo-led, uncomplicated love song Colours in The Sky, separated by an ethereal one minute piano and electronics instrumental, Winter’s Day has a more complex arrangement, 80s sounding percussion and keyboard carry a song about life ahead for a ‘newborn.. set sail on a winter’s day’. It has a lovely harp and clarinet interlude, stirring harmonies and keeps to the optimistic thread: ‘There will be mountains you will have to climb, There may be shadows, but you will always find the light’. A Time To Grow ends on a lighter note with ‘Don't Fear the Night’, connecting back to the group’s last album, ‘Shout Sister Shout’, on which they lent their wonderful harmonies to popular jazz songs from the 1920s and 30s.
Available from: www.besteunterhaltung.bandcamp.com/album/the-henry-girls-a-time-to-grow
See More: Irish Folk Music, Traditional Music
