Music / Reviews
Review: Amble, The Fleece – ‘A portal to Irish summers on land and sea’
Averting my eyes from the sacrilegious sight of Guinness in plastic cups, they landed on Sam Wilkinson, the source of a strumming guitar and juvenile tones.
This young, cord shirt-clad singer could have been plucked straight from the crowd, but was tailing Amble across the UK and Europe this winter.
As he jumped from predictable songs on secondhand heartbreak to the Bob-Dylan-special of harmonica-peppered guitar solos, it was clear Wilkinson was a talented singer still finding his voice.
is needed now More than ever
Who better to guide him up the road than Irish folk trio Amble. Despite their recent careers as teachers and a data scientist, “none of which can do long division”, their string of sold out shows is a sure sign that sometimes it is worth giving up the desk job.
Their recipe of songs rooted in tradition and storytelling has cooked up two beloved EPs and a half baked debut album.
Throughout the set, the mixture of guitars, banjos, mandolins and accordion blended naturally between the band and the three fellow Irish musicians on stage. Their brotherly playfulness and genuine awe for one another’s talent was magnetic.
After just the first verse of Little White Chapel, we were already a keen congregation before their makeshift altar. Their songs like somber sermons always ending on a hopeful note reverberated around The Fleece, our voices melding as we formed our own church choir.
As mandolinist Ross McNerney extended the outro of Into the Morning by riffing with the wider band, much to the surprise of front-man Robbie Cunningham, the flurry of whoops and celtic hollering began.
The band’s music transports audiences back to Irish landscapes and late night pub sessions
Close your eyes and you’re in the back room of a west coast local, the condensation on the windows vibrating as the pace of the banjo quickens with each round. Was the stoic “well done” bellowed from the back of the room from a Bristol local, or a Kerry barman whose age no one has ever known?
Their songs are stories, each a mosaic of eclectic people and places their international audiences find easy to resonate with: from the solitary pint drinker on Achill Island that inspired McNerney to pen Lonely Island, to the mother whose letter he found on a train and transformed into The Commons.
The blue beams that bathed Cunningham’s The Cranberries tee added an extra level of melancholia as he crooned ‘no date, no name’. His voice is rich and raw, an instrument the band would be anchorless without. Guitarist Oisín McCaffrey’s recalls how Swan Song was just a poem, but thanks to that voice it became a song.
Amble carry their emerald isle with them to every new city. Grains of sand from Enniscrone beach punctuate each line in Of Land and Sea, and Mariner Boy becomes a nightly love letter to the oceans that hug their home.
Introduced to the band by my Irish mother, their music has inadvertently become a portal to the Irish summers we shared on land and sea.
The landscape which inspired their music was my stomping ground every August growing up. The overflowing strings in Tonnta transport me to a mid-afternoon session in the corner of a Sligo pub with my grandparents, Sam Hall reminiscent of a 2am family singalong in an Enniscrone hotel lobby, Shallow River Run like the lilts and lyrics heard through the crackle of MidWest Radio in the car as the rare summer sun sets on Achill Island.
Amble inspired ‘flurried whoops and Celtic hollering’
In the throng of the mismatched crowd, I was overcome by how lucky I had been to grow up with this music, this humour, these traditions of lyrical storytelling. Thanks to Amble, endless crowds will get to experience it too.
After apologising for their brief ‘showbiz’ exit, the trio returned to end the night with us in Mary’s Pub. Their exposed harmonies and crisp chords transformed this dark venue into the warm embrace of a local with friends.
As the three lads took their final bow, it’s fair to assume that God did indeed bless the Irish.
All images: Andrea Loftus
Read next:
Our newsletters emailed directly to you
