IAN LYNCH, CONSUELO NEREA BRESCHI, LUCIE AZCONAGA
Produced by John ‘Spud’ Murphy and taken from the upcoming album ‘The World That I Knew’ – arriving May 9th
In anticipation of their upcoming album release The World That I Knew on May 9th, the Dublin-based trad music duo VARO share a new single ‘Sweet Liberty’ featuring Ian lynch. Listen here.
In its newly published issue (June 2025), MOJO declared the new album from VARO “A collective triumph” and made it their featured folk album in a 4 star review by Jim Wirth.
Ian Lynch is perhaps best known as being a founding member of pioneering doom folk band Lankum, but also for his One Leg One Eye project – a black metal noise drone solo venture, deeply imbued with a sense of Irish history and myth, that saw the album …And Take The Black Worm With Me released on Nyahh Records in 2022. Lynch also hosts a monthly podcast and radio show, Fire Draw Near, which explores Irish traditional music and folklore. From this, an anthology emerged, 2021’s Fire Draw Near – An Anthology of Traditional Irish Song and Music’, released on Rough Trade’s River Lea imprint, which KLOF Magazine called “an important and commendable collection of Irish songs and tunes.”
Describing the process of working with Ian Lynch, Lucie Azconaga and Consuelo Nerea Breschi, A.K.A. VARO, say: “It was an absolute pleasure to collaborate with Ian on ‘Sweet Liberty’. When he suggested this song for the project, we loved it straight away. It carries a powerful anti- racist message and a call to unite people.
“As we began working on it, it became clear that the lyrics were so powerful that the arrangement didn’t need to be overly intricate. Instead, we focused on creating an open space where these words could truly resonate.
“For the final line of the song, we chose to shift the harmony to a minor key. There is quite a bitterness in knowing that such a song was written 200 years ago and still, the need for these words to be sung and repeated today is depressingly vivid.”
Ian Lynch says of ‘Sweet Liberty’: “The poet and weaver John Sheil had perhaps the biggest impact of any songwriter in 19th Century Ireland and many of his songs are still extant in the oral tradition, especially in and around Drogheda where he died in 1872. This song was learned from the singing of Pat Usher of Tinure, Co. Louth in the 1970s and it appears on a 3 CD release entitled The Usher Family, which came out in 2019. I first heard it here and was particularly taken by its humanitarian message of racial equality and freedom of all from oppression. It is quite remarkable that it was written in Ireland in the 1800s.”
On working with VARO, Lynch says: “This one was a real pleasure to work on and to this day one of my favourite memories of lockdown was cycling out to Consuelo and Lucy during endless hot summer days to sit in the kitchen and get lost in the harmonies to this song.”
As with all of the songs on The World That I Knew (May 9th), ‘Sweet Liberty’ was produced by John ‘Spud’ Murphy (Lankum, ØXN, Black Midi, Goat Girl, Anna B. Savage).
The album, which has been five years in the making, has been highly anticipated due to VARO’s reputation in Dublin’s live trad and folk music scene, and also to the exceptional list of musicians featuring, which reads like a who’s who of important figures in Ireland’s contemporary folk and trad sene: Ian Lynch (Lankum), John Francis Flynn, Anna Mieke, Alannah Thornburgh, Junior Brother, Slow Moving Clouds, Niamh Bury, Inni-K, Ruth Clinton and Cormac MacDiarmada (Poor Creature), Lemoncello and Branwen. The album is available to pre-order here.
Since the release of the first single from The World That I Knew in January (‘Red Robin feat. Alannah Thornburgh’ – Listen Here, Watch Video Here), VARO have been capturing the attention of music fans worldwide, with tastemakers like Bob Boilen (founder of NPR Music’s All Songs Considered and Tiny Desk Concerts) playing the single on his WOWD Takoma Radio show and adding it to his NPR Music Spotify Playlist; Music and culture writer Will Hermes (The New York Times, Rolling Stone, Pitchfork, Uncut, etc.) making it his Song of the Day, former fRoots editor Ian Anderson featuring the single on his renowned Podwireless show and UK folk music site KLOF featuring news of the impending album release.
The second single to be released from the album, ‘Green Grows The Laurel’, featured John Francis Flynn (Listen here | Watch here) saw VARO quintuple their radio impacts, earning airplay on many stations across Ireland and abroad; the single stayed on RTÉ Radio 1’s coveted ‘Radio 1 Recommends’ list for three weeks running.
Media attention for both singles in Ireland has been extensive, with nationwide coverage in The Thin Air, Nialler9, Golden Plec, Hot Press and more, alongside international coverage in Americana UK (UK), KLOF (UK), Frontview Magazine (Belgium) and Grateful Web (USA), to name a few.
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