Brian O Headhra & Fiona Mackenzie

Tir

Anam

Highlands-based Brian O Headhra & Fiona Mackenzie have been working together for some twenty-five years, notably in the internationally recognised groups Anam and Cruinn, with whom they were nominated in the BBC Radio 2 Folk Awards in 2015 for Mackenzie’s stunning vocal performance on the track Manus Mo Ruin.

This is their first recording since that near-brush with awards success and their first album as a duo, although the support and creative input from producer Mike Vass and his studio team might lead the casual listener to assume it’s a well-integrated band at work.

The songs come from both ancient Gaelic texts and O Headhra and Mackenzie’s own writing and present a unified sound that draws on hundreds of years of tradition and yet sounds very much of our current times.

Mackenzie’s primeval, abandoned singing of the Latin psalm, Deus Auribus: Gleidh M’ Anama is right up there with Manus Mo Ruin in making the hairs rise on the back of the neck, and the duo pitch sweet expression and seasoned clarity together to great effect on the cheerier prayer, Beannaich, A Thriath Nam Flath Fial.

Rob Adams