Wonderfully warm, rich, lively fiddle-driven Irish folk by the award-winning band fronted by Carlow brothers Brían and Diarmuid Mac Gloinn with a heartbreaking number about the housing crisis, heralding their upcoming new album, All Tied Together, out on Rough Trade’s River Lea Recordings on 30 January. Inspired by early Dublin days and a squatters’ community brought to vivid life, the song was recorded completely live in a Galway house with producer Philip Weinrobe (Big Thief, Adrienne Lenker), and features an ensemble of players including Shahzad Ismaily and River Lea labelmate Sam Amidon.
The song is accompanied by a video featuring an office worker living in a tent leaving for work. Director Ellius Grace says of the video: “The Flood is about the housing crisis, and how we live in urban spaces that can sometimes feel prohibitive and impossible to survive in. Dancer Jimmy Southward takes on the character of a businessman with a supposedly successful job, though he’s still living in a tent in Phoenix Park. He gets up and goes to work, smiling and waving at passersby, but something moves him as he goes. His body convulses and he becomes more and more out of control. The briefcase is full of random objects and he throws that away eventually along with his phone, stripping away the veneer of a happy worker and becoming free. The more he succumbs to the movement and supposed madness, the happier he becomes. He doesn’t need to pretend any more.”
Ye Vagabonds will embark on a headline US tour starting on 31 January in Brooklyn, NY. Tickets for all shows are on-sale now here with later headline shows in the UK and Ireland in 2026. To explore and enjoy more by Ye Vagabonds, including another number, On Sitric Road, from the upcoming album, see also the other embedded links below.
Bells ringing in the battered yard
Evicted this morning, thought you might have heard
At 5 in the morning, they cut their way in
We were singing in the kitchen with a bailiff's charge
We were the young ones, wild things playing
Barefoot, dancing in the concrete dust
Swimming in a river of smoke and serotonin
Our forgotten city of glitter and rust
I watched the water
Rise
And I held my cover
Maybe for too long
There was a time when we kеpt each other floating
All tied togеther, bobbing up and down
We thought for a time, we could hold back the flood
But the old river rose and swallowed our town
There was a time I didn't get an answer
You said all the things I wished you had to start
You cut me loose and drifted away
Tried and failed, wandered apart
I watched the water
Rise
And I held my cover
Maybe for too long
I watched the water
Rise
And I held my cover
I watched the water
Rise
And I held my cover
Maybe for too long
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