ALBUM REVIEW: THE BUACHAILLS- ‘At Your Call’ (2014)

the boys from the county Cork

The Buachaills are a very busy band. Fresh from a London double-header weekend in February comes this their debut album ‘At Your Call’. Straight away you can hear some similarities with both The Lagan and The Bible Code Sundays. They have other things in common as both these bands are regular fixtures at London Irish home games while The Buachaills are the chief house band of Munster when they play at home at Thomand Park. Don’t know why but these rugger buggers have got great taste in music!

In their short history they’ve had some pretty notable gigs aside from the rugby occasions. Touring with Irish folk legends The Wolfe Tones, The High Kings and Finbarr Furey as well as a whole bunch of festival headlining spots they’ve even reached the ears of Irish footy legend Ian Aldridge who booked the band personally to play a function he was organising!

Formed as recently as early 2012  the band comprises of Eoin Murphy on vocals, guitar and mandolin , Aaron Dolan on uilleann pipes, whistles and vocals , James Fleming on bass, guitar and vocals and Chris Carey on Drums. They’ve become one of the most sought after trad and folk bands in Ireland and this album is likely to make them so here as well. In fact world domination could be at hand as this album is simply that good. Despite being together such a short time it must be a inspiration to other bands to see how far The Buachaills have come. Mind you hard work and superb musicianship don’t come natural for everyone!

The album itself consists of 12 tracks- 8 covers and 4 originals- and clocks in at just under 45 minutes. The choice of covers is inspired with Gerry Rafferty’s Baker Street and celtic-punk/rock standards ‘South Australia’, ‘A Pair of Brown Eyes’ and the boys even tip their hat at our exiled mams and dads with ‘Paddy’s Green Shamrock Shore’.  My own personal favourite is a cover of the Luka Bloom track ‘You Couldn’t Have Come At A Better Time’. The self-penned numbers stand up equally to these classics. As I already said the musicianship is outstanding and it’s just amazing to listen to Aarons piping. The uilleann pipes are such a beautiful instrument its sadly underused in celtic-punk with most bands preferring to use bag-pipes but I think there’s no competition myself. A couple of instrumentals get the foot tapping and a word here to Ciaran O’Shea who produced the album and done such a great job. He’s worked with Linkin Park but we’ll not hold that against him!

The Wolfe Tones and The Buachaills

The Evening Echo in Ireland described The Buachaills as ‘The Mumford and Sons of Irish trad’ and I’m very pleased to announce that is absolute total bollocks and it amazes me how a Irish newspaper can even consider making such a comparison. The Buachaills have more passion and energy and authenticity in one mandolin string than that precious, pretentious, calculated rich guys-cum-folk band can ever imagine! Folk music has such sense of history and The Buachaills love of Irish ballads and culture is obvious and its great in this age to see a young band sharing that tradition with new audiences. While bands like The Buachaills exist those traditions will never die.

Contact The Band-
Web-Site  Facebook  Soundcloud  Twitter  YouTube

I asked Eoin what The Buachaills meant and more importantly how it was pronounced and he told me na buachailli means ‘The Boys’ in Irish.  They anglicised it a bit to The Buachaills and its pronounced ‘boo cals’…

The Buachaills- ‘Baker Street’

The Buachaills- ‘the Boys From Fairhill’

http://youtu.be/DKbpJmHERXE

Tagged: Bible Code Sundays, Buachaills, The Lagan, Wolfe Tones