Junior Brother

When KLOF magazine tells you that someone takes traditional Irish instrumentation and makes it sound “like birdsong or Armageddon, sometimes within the bounds of a single song”, and Time Out puts his 2025 album The End in its annual top 10, you kind of have to listen. The someone in question is Ronan Kealy aka Junior Brother, from County Kerry, and to call him idiosyncratic would be an injustice to the word. His take on folk is akin to free jazz, and puts us in mind of an Irish Richard Dawson with more complex anger issues. Or a folk Frank Zappa. We suspect he’ll deliver his Greenbelt performance to a tent full of open mouths.