Pour a double, settle-in, and prepare yourself to be bowled over by one of the most powerful voices in all of contemporary Folk music. Macdara Yeates’ debut album was released in the early Autumn of 2024 and has garnered much acclaim and praise since then, including multiple nominations from RTE Radio One, as well as being named as one of the ten best Folk albums from the pre-eminent UK music mag MOJO. And you’ll understand the prestigious hype the moment the first notes from his sonorous baritone hit your inner ear canal.

Yeates has been a player in the Irish Folk scene for over a decade now, co-founding the now-legendary ‘The Night Before Larry Got Stretched” monthly Folk gathering and collective in 2012 with fellow balladeers Lisa O’Neill, Ian Lynch and Lankum, all of whom have since enjoyed widespread popularity. Yeates, however, was reluctant to record an album on his own, content on performing regular gigs at the famed Dublin Folk pub The Cobblestone. He admits “It took me a while to get out of my own way.”

Over these ten traditional Folk ballads, Yeates, with just his voice and occasional sparse guitar accompaniment, runs the gamut from familiar tunes, humorous pub classics, and politically-charged anti-war ballads. His voice booms with distilled earnestness and warmth, a singular thunderclap that marks the collision of hundreds of years of stormy tradition with a torrent of modern vitality.