{"id":130882,"date":"2025-11-09T19:13:08","date_gmt":"2025-11-09T19:13:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/130882\/"},"modified":"2025-11-09T19:13:08","modified_gmt":"2025-11-09T19:13:08","slug":"macd-on-music-brothers-and-sisters","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/130882\/","title":{"rendered":"MacD on Music: Brothers and Sisters"},"content":{"rendered":"

In the past (almost) four years, I\u2019ve spoken to a lot of familial artists spanning all musical genres, from column #1 with Saint Sister\u2019s Gemma Doherty or column #5\u2019s Brother Ray (also featuring the first appearance in these pages of Lord Jane\u2019s Clodagh May) to the star of multiple articles, the Barbiturates\u2019 Father Flynn, the Grateful Mistake and Grandmaster of the Brothers of Fire Baptismal -33\u00b0.<\/p>\n

This week, I\u2019m talking to another artist of the family tradition, Killarney\u2019s Junior Brother, who\u2019ll be playing Sandino\u2019s on the 21st of this month. I caught up with Junior recently to talk a bit about the gig, his new album \u2018The End\u2019 (available now in Cool Discs) and his musical origins:<\/p>\n

\u201cI got into music when I was very young. I started playing the piano when I was eight and the guitar when I was nine. I kept at the guitar more than the piano and as soon as I\u2019d learnt a few chords I started writing songs, so I\u2019ve been writing songs since I was about nine, around two years ago.\u201d<\/p>\n

Speaking about his musical influences: \u201cIn terms of my guitar playing, I love a lot of harp players. Alan Stivell, Derek Bell from the Chieftains, Joanna Newsom. She would also be very influential in my songwriting too. Then bands like Planxty, the Clancy Brothers, Slint. I\u2019m very influenced by bands like early Genesis, King Crimson, sort of prog stuff like that. Little bits of hip-hop as well, Danny Brown and KRS One too. All sorts of things. I try to put them all in there so what comes out is maybe something that hopefully you\u2019ve never heard before.\u201d<\/p>\n

Next, we spoke of \u2018The End\u2019 [disclaimer: this interview was done before the album was released]: \u201cThis is my third record. A goal of mine is to hone things and go deeper into aspects of my music that I\u2019ve developed, dig further down, expand them and get better at what I\u2019m doing each time. This album is probably the biggest leap I\u2019ve taken as an artist, but it\u2019s also the height of my development in terms of the style of music that I\u2019ve been reaching for the last few years. It\u2019s hit a peak that I\u2019m very proud of. It\u2019s a peak from which I can feel I can get even further in that journey. I\u2019m really happy with it. I\u2019m quite proud of where I\u2019ve gotten to with my artistry.\u201d<\/p>\n

We moved on then to the gig: \u201cI\u2019ve never played Sandino\u2019s before. I\u2019ve heard it\u2019s a great spot. I\u2019ve played Derry before in St. Columba\u2019s church for Other Voices with David Kitt during some of the worst period of Lockdown. The crowd were all spaced meters apart and wearing masks. It was quite bizarre, but I really loved the gig. Before that, I did a gig in Bennigan\u2019s years ago. I really enjoyed that, and I\u2019ve done a gig in Cool Discs. I\u2019ve played a few times, but I\u2019ve never been to Sandino\u2019s so I\u2019m really looking forward to that.\u201d<\/p>\n

After that, we spoke about the collaboration he did for Other Voices with Saint Sister: \u201cIt was December 2019 for Other Voices too. That was a great experience. They\u2019re two phenomenal musicians. I was really impressed with them when we did that.\u201d<\/p>\n

To close our conversation, I asked him about any other artists he\u2019s a fan of at the minute: \u201cThere\u2019s a really good singer-songwriter from West Cork called D\u00e1ith\u00ed Shanahan. There\u2019s also a great up and coming band from Dublin called Madra Salach. I caught them at All Together Now and they were great. There\u2019s a band called Dug that are making waves now too, then there\u2019s R\u00f3is. She\u2019s from the north. She\u2019s absolutely amazing and keeps getting better and better. Her last album \u2018Mo L\u00e9an\u2019 was an incredible project.\u201d<\/p>\n

READ MORE:\u00a0MacD on Music<\/a><\/p>\n

And that\u2019s it from Junior Brother. His new album \u2018The End\u2019 is out now and he\u2019ll be playing Sandino\u2019s on November 21st. Doors are at 7 with the gig starting at 7.15. Tickets are available in Cool Discs for \u00a311.<\/p>\n

Now, onto other business. There\u2019s new music from Wicklow-based artist ILA, who featured in this column in the summer of 2023 (I would\u2019ve sworn it was more recent, but time is broken these days). Anyway, her latest single \u2018Unforgettable\u2019 was released last month and is available now on all good streaming services.<\/p>\n

Next, we have new music from Belfast group Reflect, recently seen opening for CHERYM in Belfast and for Cora Harkin in the Nerve Centre. Their new single \u2018Ocnus\u2019 was released this past Friday and is also available on all good streaming services.<\/p>\n

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The new music doesn\u2019t stop there. Last Thursday also saw the release of the latest single from Dublin-based HAVVK. \u2018Happening Again\u2019 is the group\u2019s first single following their acclaimed third album \u2018To Fall Asleep\u2019 and \u201cexplores destructive patterns of behaviour, built on a cyclical structure that mirrors the emotional spiral of dread and overwhelm\u201d. It\u2019s out now in the same places as every other song mentioned here.<\/p>\n

And lastly, in this week\u2019s trip from one end of the country to the other, we close with Derry\u2019s own Dylan Bradley & the Heat, who have just released their second single \u2018Susana\u2019. In news that will surprise no one who\u2019s read the last three paragraphs, it is available on all good streaming services.<\/p>\n

Finally, time for the socials. Dylan Bradley can be found on Instagram @dylanbradleyheat, HAVVK @havvkmusic, Reflect @reflectbelfast, ILA @ila_music_official and Junior Brother @junior.brother.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In the past (almost) four years, I\u2019ve spoken to a lot of familial artists spanning all musical genres,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":130883,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[7726,17201,61,60,36110,43],"class_list":["post-130882","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-ireland","tag-derry","tag-derry-news","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-macd-on-music","tag-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/130882","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=130882"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/130882\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/130883"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=130882"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=130882"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=130882"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}