When Irish group Landless take to the stage, they open a portal to old folk songs and ballads with dark atmospheres and haunting vocal harmonies. Songs that are often hundreds of years old, but which, on the lips of Landless, grip the audience with a powerful presence.
Méabh Meir, Lily Power, Ruth Clinton and Sinéad Lynch, who make up the quartet, have all been part of Dublin's traditional vocal scene for many years. In 2013, they came together to form Landless and released their beautiful debut album Bleaching Bones in 2018. With the follow-up Lúireach, released in 2024 on Glitterbeat, they have truly realized their potential with an album produced by John 'Spud' Murphy (Lankum, ØXN).
The unique sound of the four voices is still in clear focus on an album that also creates atmospheric arrangements around the vocal harmonies, including organ and banjo. The Guardian wrote in a superlative review of the album that the four voices: "seem to rise from the sacra of their spines, emerging from their bodies in heavenly flight or heavy drones."
This suggests the power of Landless' interpretations of both old Irish ballads and new poetic material, organically intertwined in otherworldly vocal harmonies.
