Finding such a highly regarded, not to mention award-nominated, blues musician in Ireland can only be a reminder that most Western roots traditions can be easily traced through a shared musical family tree. Just as European folk music crossed the ocean to inspire American country and folk styles, so to it mingled with more exotic and even farther-flung sounds, giving rise to the likes of blues and gospel. Now, as the world becomes a smaller place, blues is one of the many styles found across the globe, including in one of its ancestral homes, Ireland.
Blending not only old-school blues but other roots and soul sounds, It’s About Time is a gorgeous dance of tradition and modernity, the sound of the past being explored by contemporary writers and musicians, and aimed at a whole new audience.
“Wanderer” kicks off with a brooding and brilliant, restrained, and understated blues-scape, a sound as much built on atmosphere as on the deftly placed sonics and distant gospel harmonies. And if “Come On Home” offers a perfect blend of rousing pop and bluesy grooves, “Bad Girls Lament” is an American folk song that hasn’t travelled too far from its original form, just enough to add a modern sheen, a subtle one at that.
“Down This Road” has one foot in blues cool, one in pop accessibility, and one in rock and roll groove…that’s how dexterous it is, “Ode to The Sea” is a modern folk song that sounds as if you have been listening it your whole life and the album rounds off with perhaps one of the most covered pieces of trad folk. But what is so great about Ndidi O’s take on “She Moves Through The Fair” is that, even though it has been reworked and reimagined so many times, she still finds new places to take it – here a blend of chilled acoustica, funerary beats, rich atmospherics, and striking centre-of-attention-commanding vocals.
All genres have to move with the times; they must, or they collapse into nostalgic reverie. It’s About Time is the sound of roots music doing just that, balancing the familiarity of what has gone before yet adding rich and rewarding, artistic and historically aware textures to the story. The album is also perfectly titled; it is about time and about the way music cycles through it, being both constantly reborn and still echoing its own history.
