Over a decade since he was last active Irish singer-songwriter Ciaran Murphy is back with an 11-track album of incendiary acoustic Folk with a Punk as hell attitude. London Celtic Punk Sean Creegan reviews the new release.

January 9, 2025 Written by: London Celtic Punks from thefreeonline at https://wp.me/pIJl9-FvB Telegram https://t.me/thefreeonline

I must admit to being very happy on hearing that Ciaran Murphy or Pip as he’s known to many had decided to pick up the guitar again and pen some new material after a long period of time off in the musical world.

I was even happier to then be asked to review the new album for the London Celtic Punks website.

Since we had last heard from Ciaran he told us he had genuinely planned to never write or record again and focus instead on academia and to his credit he had since gained degrees, masters degrees, started a PHD (in his own words) realised it was “utterly fucking useless in the long run and stopped”.

Living as he does in the six counties Ciaran had seen the political situation become exactly what James Connolly had warned us about when he said “unless you set about the establishment of a Socialist Republic your efforts will be in vain… England will still rule you”.

“Songs started coming back into my head because of pure frustration at seeing republicanism being drawn so far into that trap. And I just got the guitar out to scratch an itch tbh”.

The eleven track album which has haunting tin whistle, bodhran, guitar and if I’m not mistaken banjo throughout the songs tackles the kind of subject matter you would expect from Ciaran all sung with passion and heart.

Two tracks from Pips previous albums are reworked for this album namely ‘Death With Walls’ and ‘For God And Ulster’. They fit in well and sit alongside the new tracks admirably.

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The clearest example of this ideological corruption is nationalism’s ongoing acceptance of ‘Internment By Remand’, the imprisonment of republican political activists using sham ‘evidence’ from Mi5 and the PSNI, which everyone knows will not be accepted at any upcoming trial but is used to take men and women off the streets and keep them on remand for 2 – 4 years at a time.

It’s believed that over 11,000 days have been lost by victims of this tactic with constitutional nationalism turning a blind.

The song was the first single from the album released on August 9th, the date of the original internment operations of 1971.

“Free Staters. I’m taking Ireland for myself. Never mind nobody else”

A version of Shane MacGowans ‘The Dunes’ is included and sounds great.

It’s definitely leaning more towards a ballad’s type album but my favourite track ‘Free Staters’ is a bit more up tempo.

All in all Pip has made another thought provoking record in his own inimitable style that indeed tells us of the land that Connolly warned us of.

Rev Archibald Warwick was hung in front of his congregation following the 1798 rebellion.

Today nothing exists to remember his sacrifice, either in his home parish of Kirkubbin or beyond except this wonderful tribute from Ciaran.

We welcome Ciaran back and hope to see him belt these tunes out in the near future at a London Celtic Punks gig.

Last word to Ciaran and why he’s back and whatever we imagined to be brave is no comparison to what he’s doing… and doing so well.

The so called ‘Rebel’ music scene here doesn’t want to touch on these issues (Maghaberry, PSNI oppression, Craigavon 2 etc) because singers are afraid of not being asked to play certain bars, festivals etc which made it all the more urgent to start writing again so these topics aren’t totally ignored.

(You can stream / download the album from the Bandcamp app below) https://bandcamp.com/EmbeddedPlayer/v=2/album=3867043909/size=large/bgcol=ffffff/linkcol=2ebd35/tracklist=false/artwork=small/

Buy The Land That Connolly Warned Us Of Bandcamp