Still residing as BBC Radio 2 Folk Singer of the Year, Ríoghnach Connolly‘s taste for musical adventure remains eclectic and adventurous as ever. Along with her companion players, Honeyfeet, they collectively drive a broad terrain of musical textures from esoteric protest songs to foot-tapping and floor-thumping dance rhythms on their new album It’s Been A While Buddy.
Having had illustrious careers to this point, touring the UK and headlining stages at Shambala, Beautiful Days and Moovin Festivals as well as wowing audiences at the likes of Glastonbury, Boomtown, Wilderness, Secret Garden Party and Kendal Calling Ríoghnach and the Honeyfeet ensemble are equally proficient in headlining festival stages as they are stripping back to sublime obscure jazz on theatre stages.
Spanning elements of folk, blues, rock, jazz and soul across the new album but settling on their self defined genre “Folk-Hop”, It’s Been A While Buddy is a striking representation of Honeyfeet’s heavy sound. From the bountiful to the subtle, with everything from big-band swing to Alabama blues-tinged folk, the varying soundscapes are all held together by the powerful vocals and flute from Ríoghnach.
The album’s lead single ‘How Could I’ is a prime example of the band’s sounds – fuzzy blues rock of heavy guitars, layers of brass and subtle synths which drive the track forward under Ríoghnach’s emotive powerhouse vocals.
Speaking about the single, Rioghnach adds: “I suppose the lyrical content is a bit dark as essentially it’s about marital abuse, control, domestic coercion or a toxic relationship. A partner who cannot let go of their abuser, or the abused being unable to see a life without them in it. It pivots from not realising that they were in a toxic relationship to realising that even if they did, they would have suffered it willingly anyway. It speaks to how easy it is to be in a place until after the fact. To be blinded by love. How inevitable self denial leads to combustion. How bad patterns of behaviour left unchecked can spiral..”
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