Luka Bloom – This New Morning (2012)

The younger brother of influential Irish singer/ songwriter Christy Moore, Barry Moore had tired of being in his brother’s shadow when he decided to relocate to the United States in 1987. Re-christening himself Luka Bloom during the long airplane ride, he took the first steps toward establishing his own reputation. A master interpreter, Bloom has continued to balance original songs with reinventions of tunes by a diverse range of songwriters.
On This New Morning, Bloom continues to shake up the genre with clever chord sequences and arrangements, while still retaining folk’s core values of story-telling and commentary.
Bloom is primarily known in Ireland as a solo guitar and mic man. Here, he has gathered together a Who’s Who from the Irish folk pantheon. This New Morning sounds like a band album – and what a band: Hansard, Lunny, Ó Lionaird, Eimear Quinn, Steve Cooney and Conor Byrne. The playing is magnificent throughout. Bloom co-produced this record with his old sparring partner, Brian Masterson, and together they have created an album of outstanding beauty, sensitivity and… fun.