Junior Brother

Carefully pushing the boundaries of what modern Irish folk can look and sound like, Junior Brother is an idiosyncratic, challenging, and richly lyrical singer/songwriter from Co. Kerry. His much-anticipated third album, The End, is officially announced and due to arrive on September 5th via Strap Originals, a label forged with love by Pete Doherty of The Libertines.

Following the success of his 2024 single Take Guilt, Junior Brother offers another taste of his upcoming LP with Small Violence, a powerful track that addresses the growing influence of misinformation and the escalating wave of conspiracy-fueled hatred.

Speaking about the new track, Junior Brother says: “Small Violence follows a character pulled in by a small few who enjoy using violent words to stoke real violence further down the line. The intro riff was heavily inspired by the Opening Titles of “The Blood on Satan’s Claw”, a Folk Horror from 1971 which I highly recommend to anyone except the sensible.”

The End is a deeply instinctive yet carefully considered response to the chaos of modern life, with Junior Brother weaving the recent years of upheaval into the eerie folklore of Fairy Forts.  These ring-shaped earth mounds, scattered across the Irish countryside, are known to possess an energy that can bewilder, curse, or even lead the unwary astray. Stepping into one is to risk losing yourself—both physically and spiritually. To Junior Brother, this ancient folklore mirrors the disorienting reality of today’s world.

“The sound of the album is supposed to take the organic instruments of Irish traditional music and lift them somewhere else,” Junior Brother explains, “like the otherworldly Irish music sometimes heard from Fairy Forts at twilight on country roads, impossible to recreate upon hearing.” The End captures this essence, blending the raw textures of traditional Irish music with spectral, unearthly elements.

Much of the album’s inspiration was drawn from UCD’s Folklore Collection on duchas.ie, “I delved into the manuscripts—endless eyewitness accounts of Fairy Forts being stepped into and the land altering, the familiar mutating,” Junior Brother shares. “Farmers, teachers, the sober, the smart—all losing their way home one way or the other.” In these uncanny tales of displacement and confusion, he found striking parallels to the instability and distortion of contemporary life.

Thematically, The End explores forces that work against nature (New Road, Welcome to My Mountain), the rise of the far-right (Small Violence, Today My Uncle Told Me), and confrontations with mortality (Old Bell, Start Digging). Through the lens of rural Irish folklore, the album reflects the bewildering madness of the present moment.

“The title The End represents the moment after being led astray, when the grip of madness releases you and you suddenly see your way home,” says Junior Brother. “It may reflect the doom of a world gone mad, but it also represents the end of darkness, and the start of a new road.”

‘Wry songs of anxiety and frustration’
The Guardian

‘One of the island’s all-time songwriting greats.’
Brian Coney, The Thin Air

‘Junior Brother’s voice is an unlovely but strangely compelling thing and his wayward guitar style is brittle and guttural… You’ll laugh, you’ll cry, you’ll think.’
Alan Corr, RTE.ie