New Irish Roots Music: Lorkin O'Reilly & Melanie MacLaren

Lorkin O’Reilly 

A Scottish native of Irish ancestry now living in New York, the old-country-influenced singer-songwriter Lorkin O’Reilly, whose sound is reminiscent of Bert Jansch, Nick Drake and Townes Van Zandt, explores themes of home and identity in songs that draw as deeply from the personal and intuitive as from Gaelic folk traditions. Born in Edinburgh in 1994, Lorkin’s early musical education was heavily steeped in the sounds of his mother’s native Ireland. Since emigrating to the United States from Scotland in 2012, O’Reilly has been making a name for himself as a commanding new songwriting talent. Warm and reflective, his writing portrays not only his own reality, but experiences faced by most of us: the purgatory between childhood and adulthood, between new home and old home and finally the overarching struggle of finding a new identity.

"His incisive songcraft pulls you into his world – a place of graphic memories, hearts and flowers, wide-eyed wonder, hopes, regrets, and life’s little quirks – and it’s impossible not to surrender to the experience."- David Morrison, Folk Radio

Nashville-based, Melanie MacLaren’s natural aptitude for nuanced delivery, wistful guitar playing, and her ability to write about life as if life were simply writing itself is everything you could want from a folk singer. MacLaren’s music is not so much rooted in a place and time as it is suspended, caught between worlds— dreamlike and hyper-realistic, timeless and contemporary. Her lyrics, evocative melodies and intricate fingerstyle guitar weave together with ethereal, modern production and distorted trad instruments, joining the threads of past and present folk music in a haunting experience.

"A regal exemplification of a dreamy folk sound that is all too easy to sink into, allowing yourself a brief escape into an alternative reality.” - Unheard Gems 

“Surpasses all expectations.” - Lefuturewave