Lewis Barfoot - Glenaphuca (2021)

Born in Walthamstow, the daughter of an Irish mother and English father, Lewis Barfoot, a talented multi-instrumentalist singer and songwriter is somewhat of a polymath, having already enjoyed careers in both medicine and acting. Now happily settled in Cork this is reflected in the title of her debut album, Glenafuca, the place located in the said County and famed for its ancient menhir.

This release is the delightful sound of a musician who is both an accomplished composer of original material and also a torchbearer keeping alive traditional styles and songs from both Ireland and the UK in a way that pays due deference to the past whilst also potentially opening the door to making folk music more accessible and exciting to new, modern audiences.

Fisherman, the first single, shared in Folk Radio towards the end of 2020, sees the opening lyrics sung in Irish before the song develops, with the juxtaposition of strings and the warm clarinet of Matt Dibble emulating and recalling a watery ebb and flow which drifts around a melody from the traditional Irish song Dúlamán, (‘seaweed’ in English, and also the title of Clannad‘s third album), here delivered by the seductive violin of Elisabeth Flett. The link with Clannad is further cemented when considering Lewis’s vocals, which to these ears are fashioned from the same high-quality mould as those of Marie Brennan.

Whilst there is a clear thread, that of life and death, permeating the album, the self-penned offerings also tend towards the autobiographical, reflecting her wish to explore her family roots in Ireland, and they possess the capacity to frequently remove the listener from the here-and-now to other mystical and preternatural realms. Two initial songs offer thoughts on family and grief. Firstly the beautifully lilting acoustic finger-picked White Dress, a moving prayer-like lament to her late mother, is seemlessly followed by Sweet Dreams, which whilst it muses on the afterlife and its connection with those who remain, is a more uplifting piece.

Ballinatray, which Lewis wrote in 2012, was the name of her grandparents’ farmstead in East Cork, and the song is a true, albeit melancholy story, sparsely delivered with multi-tracked vocals. Relating that their father ‘put drink in his mouth‘ and that their mother was ‘labelled as a mad one for speaking her own mind’ the song chronicles the sad fate of the nine children, of whom the six boys ‘died, not a man left’, whilst the three girls were despatched ‘without a toy between them’ as the nuns ‘locked the orphanage door’. Emotional fare indeed, bringing to mind the similar destiny of those forced to endure the Magdalene Laundries.

Lewis’s choices of reinterpretations of traditional material includes ‘Twa Corbies, in its original form the English ballad The Three Ravens, which fits in perfectly with her motif of the cyclical nature of life and death. The lament opens with angelic vocals before a short spoken passage from Scottish fiddler friend Charlie Menzies leads into the main passage of the song, which features some suitably wistful and contemplative playing from this instrument. Returning to Ireland, Amhrán Fosuíochta, an old Sean-nós Irish herding song from Connemara, is sung, in Gaeilge, from the viewpoint of a woman singing to her cows, and again features the shruti, which together with other intriguing sounds evokes wide-open lush, green landscapes.

In her notes, Lewis explains that the album is a folk prayer to her ancestors and largely focuses upon the feminine and her Irish roots. In order to honour one member of the family hitherto not mentioned, namely her father, she has chosen The Fox, her favourite song that he used to sing to her as a child. Upbeat and jaunty, in keeping with a good old-fashioned singsong, the choice also cleverly references one of the underlying themes, as the fox family dine on the goose, with ‘the little ones chewing on the bones-o’.

‘Rise with me and I’ll rise with you, step on my shoulders sister, I’m coming too’