Album builds on new SOSU film
REVIEW
These are bitter sweet days for the Sons of Southern Ulster. With the Bailieborough indie band the subject of a documentary film by award winning director (and self confessed SOSU fan) Frank Shouldice, never has their stock been higher.
The sold out premiere of ‘Once We Were Punks’ at Galway Film Fleadh reportedly “went down a storm” last week - so much so that a second screening was put on and it promptly sold out too.
And yet the Bailiborough band are coming to terms with life after losing bandmate and friend to illness Noel Larkin in 2024. Their third album, ‘Through the Bridewell Gate’ is dedicated to the memory of the drummer, who features on the album.
‘A true Son of Southern Ulster. It was a privilege to have known you. Until we meet again,’ reads the band’s inscription on the album.
Typical of previous releases, ‘Bridewell’ tells stories of colourful and/or vulnerable characters drawn from the mouldy petri dish of Cavan of the 1970s and ‘80 where there’s “war on the doorstep” and a desire to break from the Border.
The album title presumably comes from the recently restored Bridewell in Bailieborough - a gaol where many poor souls were handed harsh sentences for petty crimes in the 19th century - but its focus seems much more late.
It’s hard not to read a narrative arc in the lyrics particularly in the first half, with despair at rural life, futile fights and lack of future, leading to emigration to the States where isolation and unresolved issues lead to drink problems explored in ‘My Affliction’.
From previous SOSU albums we’re used to their Kavanagh-esque delight in the local - when’s the last time you heard ‘Cliferna and Lisball’ in a song? Why shouldn’t ‘Tunnyduff and Beglieve’ be name checked in an indie song? Even an arson attack on a local loyal orange lodge is recalled: “That night the Billyhill Hall went up in an Orange glow,” sings Kelly.
At times they evoke similar atmospheres to Nick Cave at his gothic best, but the delivery is often with a twinkle in Justin Kelly’s eye. In Who Loves Ya’ Baby? - a nod to TV cop Kojak’s famous catchphrase - the mounting melodrama is wonderfully undercut by the memorable rhyme: “his late father’s wellingtons/that she bought in Paddy Finnegan’s”.
Lyrically Kelly is arguably at his best in ‘To the New World and Back’ where he references the Polo Grounds victory of ‘47, and the wining of “medals that whispered we were not born for chicken factories and mushroom farms, and scraps of bad land that shrunk as each generation passed.”
For this reviewer, the highlights include Who Loves Ya’ Baby?, Flash the Ash, the common link of which are the creative rhythm guitar work of Meagher, playing off the under-stated groove of bassist Paddy Glackin and Larkin. The final minute of Left Hand of God is possibly the band’s zenith with Kelly’s soaring line ‘A prodigal son is a wonderful thing’ rumbling around this reviewer’s head for days on end.
However, these tracks are also front loaded, which unfortunately leaves the album lagging a little in the second half.
It the closing track, ‘The Star in the Sky are Aglow’ Kelly roars the line: ‘We avoided dark mirrors for fear of what we’d see’ - a fine observation for a band so clearly committed to self reflection.
As tribute to Larkin, ‘Through the Bridewell Gate’ is a very fine send off.