“One of the island’s all time songwriting greats” is how The Thin Air describes Co. Kerry singer-songwriter 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 was released this Autumn and is a defining release for the artist. The album is on Strap Originals, a label forged with love by Peter Doherty of The Libertines.

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.

‘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.”

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.”