LUCIA (2023)
“In removing conjecture, he draws closer to the heart of his subject matter, each classical guitar track conjuring up images of the dancer in flow. “
The Sunday Times Ireland
“By any standards this is an extraordinary piece of work.”
No More Workhorse
“Deft and well-considered, the work spins and soars. An elegant discordant gem. The guitar cascades, dances and flies.”
The Irish Times
“The music— ornate and elegant — flits from spry to haunting. A quietly beautiful triumph.”
The Irish Independent
“A triumph.”
The Irish Daily Mail
“A stunning tribute. A work of art, to use Joyce's own words, so beautiful and sad that it speaks to every soul's incurable loneliness."
Sunday Times Culture
“LUCIA is a stunning thing.”
Donal Fallon, Three Castles Burning
“The whole thing is a beautiful piece of work.”
BBC Classical Connections
CAROLAN/CAGE (2021)
Worldwide Number 1 on Bandcamp Contemporary Classical Chart, 2021
UNDER THE RAGGED THORN - LIVE IN NICE (2021)
RTE LYRIC FM ALBUM OF THE WEEK
JUPITER’S WIFE (2020)
Irish Album Of The Year (2020) - The Irish Mirror
Jupiter’s Wife is one of the greatest Irish albums of the decade. Jason O’Toole, Irish Daily Mirror
The rich sound of Joe’s rare 40-year-old Lowden guitar becomes the centrepiece of the master songwriter-producer’s latest set of melodic, thoughtful compositions. Superior sonic cocooning. Eamonn Carr, The Evening Herald
Chester is back with Jupiter’s Wife, a characteristic mix of subtle lyricism and beautifully orechesrated music bristling with literary references. Apt for man who may belong in the same rarefied territory as Robert Forster of The Go-Betweens.
Alan Corr, RTE
Dans Jupiter’s Wife, il est évidemment question de folk à l’état pur. Habilement joué, sincèrement mis en forme. Un bel objet sonore.
Magic, Revue Pop Moderne
The mood is meditative, the music absorbing. This music stimulates the mind as much as it pleases the ear.
The Sunday Times
Jupiter's Wife is a beautiful album that aches with melancholy, heartbreak & reflectiveness but also with hope. Recorded in the famous Sun Studios, An early Choice Music Prize contender. PlayIrish
The sound throughout is warm and welcoming, even when the lyrics bleed pain… this album slowly and sensuously reveals its charms. The Heart of St Laurence O’Toole is a folk epic. From the haunting instrumentals to the soulful vocal and reverb-laden guitar, Jupiter’s Wife reels you in. An album to lose yourself in.
****½ - Sunday Business Post
Jupiter’s Wife is a double album and a substantial piece of work it is too. There are several songs, like “Staying Together For The Children,” that resonate powerfully.. It is typical of Chester’s approach to songwriting. Not for him the sort of cliched fare that pockmarks the work of so many of his peers. He has amassed more than a quarter century of high-quality music. He should be a household name.
The Irish Independent
Album of the week - RTE Lyric FM
Album of the week - PLAYIRISH Radio
Ceux qui ne se sont jamais remis de This Is The Sea (1985) des aînés The Waterboys, ceux qui ne se sont jamais remis des premiers disques de Van the Man, il est fort à parier que Jupiter's Wife vienne nourrir toutes vos espérances. Car Jupiter's Wife est un objet de vie et de vues, car il nous ressemble, car on y reviendra encore et toujours comme on revient toujours à ces petits sentiers qui surplombent la surface tremblante de l'océan, ces chemins qui mènent à la naissance d'une montagne, car cette musique nous élève loin, très haut de notre petitesse.
Greg Bod, Benzine Magazine
Jupiter’s wife est une invitation à l’exploration de terres lointaines et rurales, parfois même inhabitées. A l’écoute de ces joyaux musicaux, on n’a qu’à se laisser porter par la voix enjôleuse de Joe Chester, à ne penser à rien d’autre qu’à ce petit voyage jusqu’au confin des contrées irlandaises. Jupiter’s wife est un opus de qualité et on se demande comment cet irlandais pur sang ne s’est pas encore fait une personnalité dans le petit univers de la folk britannique. Joe Chester peut devenir avec Jupiter’s wife une étoile montante du genre folk et sonner la révolte des irlandais face aux puissants anglais qui, même du point de vue musical, exercent une impitoyable domination.
Jean-Christophe Tannieres - Sensation Rock Magazine
Un album so Irish comme une promenade en bord de mer. C’est ce que nous offre Joe Chester pour son retour avec Jupiter’s Wife. Et ça fait plaisir à entendre. Avec cet album plein de charme et de finesse, Joe Chester nous procure un bien fou.
Didier Pezant, LACN Magazine
Like Leonard Cohen or Tom Waits, a really beautiful piece of work musically and lyrically, definitely one of Ireland's best and most prodigious songwriters. Cork 96FM
The Irish singer-songwriter has established himself as a spearhead on the local indie folk scene, but deserves to be more widely recognised. We feel that the situation will change with his double album, Jupiter’s Wife. Theatrical and melancholic compositions performed on acoustic guitar with the most beautiful, sumptuous and affecting baroque arrangements alternate with instrumental passages reflecting a rainy and gloomy Ireland with vocal performances at once whispered and powerful. There is no time to breathe during A Siren Song To A Shipwreck, Hilton and Michael or the conclusion entitled Novena which demonstrates all of the artistic prowess of Joe Chester.
8/10 Les Oreilles Curieuses
Jupiter’s Wife charts the slow dissolution of marriage in both its most personal and broader sense (Juno, goddess of love and conjugal bonds, was Jupiter’s counterpart), and is replete with the complexities and conflicts that befall a fraying romance, the heart’s invisible furies manifested beautifully in soundscapes of searing tenderness and plangency.
Nialler 9
LIVE AT UNITARIAN CHURCH (2017)
A long drawn out opening featuring the sounds of the sea and a prayer recital in Irish introduced Joe Chester’s set as he opened with the propulsive Spy Wednesday. Joined by Vyvienne Long on cello, Steve Wickham on violin and Brian Brannigan on keyboards, they played a moody set drawn from recent album The Easter Vigil. Chester’s voice has weathered a bit over the years and suits him better now, sounding a little like Michael Stipe on That’s Why Love Is Hell and Like A Rose Tattoo. Juliette In The Rain came across like Springsteen in his Tunnel of Love era while Dark Mornings was the poppiest moment, featuring Chester’s bright electric guitar licks. The set culminated in him pulling out his Dad’s guitar on the downbeat, elegiac Not A Christian Anymore before they encored with a passionate version of Vic Chestnutt’s Flirted With You All My Life (the line “oh death clearly I’m not ready” could only resonate in such a setting).
It felt like a spiritual evening and you could argue it was, with fine, affecting Irish music that moved the soul. A triumph for Joe Chester.
No More Workhorse.
THE EASTER VIGIL (2017)
Irish Album Of The Year (2017) - The Irish Sun
Juliette Walking in the Rain is genuinely breathtaking and the haunting Valley Of Tears is truly transcendent. A hugely rewarding album. - Hotpress Magazine
Chester’s fifth album is yet another reason to wonder out loud just how and why he isn’t much better known. Chester’s stylistic traces have rarely been better outlined. Dark Mornings is melody incarnate, brimming with chiming guitar chords and wistful lyrics, while Valley Of Tears is as beautifully sorrowful as the title indicates. The pleasures of the remaining tracks unfurl somewhat more slowly, but are no less rich or rewarding. - Tony Clayton-Lea, The Sunday Business Post
With some heavy-duty guests, including cellist Vyvienne Long, in tow, the respected Dublin producer's fifth album, an exploration of faith, love, discovery and belief, is deep, personal and intriguing.
- The Evening Herald
Archbishop McQuaid, Julliette Binoche, the “national razor” and the Swastika Laundry all get mentions on Joe Chester’s haunting new album, The Easter Vigil. "Spy Wednesday" bristles with lyrics worthy of Elvis Costello. The Easter Vigil is his most profound and moving work yet. - RTE
This fifth album is another beautifully produced collection. From the string-driven Spy Wednesday to the gentle venom of the title track The Easter Vigil with melodies that linger and lyrics that prod and provoke. Recommended. - The Sunday Times
A songwriter’s songwriter, he’s had praise for his alt-pop melodies heaped on him but… his career hasn’t been forged with those aims. Instead, he’s trying to do something different: challenge himself and continue to make music that feels original. There are touches of Beck’s The Golden Age on his new album The Easer Vigil, alongside the kind of elegant, minor-key flourishes reminiscent of The Blue Nile’s Paul Buchanan. The tone is intimate, warm and vulnerable. - Nadine O'Regan
Eight songs long, and softer and more spartan than much of Joe’s previous output, ‘The Easter Vigil’ is simply another chapter in a body of work that’s as impressive as that by any contemporary Irish artist.
From the peppy opener that takes place on ‘Spy Wednesday’ to the magnificent closer, ‘I’m Not A Christian Anymore’, located on Easter Sunday, the record’s central figure concludes a passage from confident believer [‘I know that my Redeemer lives’] through self-doubt, uncertainty and onwards into disbelief. When, over the album’s concluding bars, Joe sings ;- ‘that night in the sleeping house of God, I was a phantom walking in the corridor. I was a Christian then, I’m not a Christian anymore’.
But it had all been so different back at the beginning, seven songs earlier. ‘Spy Wednesday’ has an innocent Waterboys feel – appropriately enough, it could sit easily on ‘A Pagan Place’ – that springs to its capstone off of a saxophone solo by Anthony Thistlethwaite. Another packing considerable Waterboys history, Steve Wickham, lends the violin and viola parts while cellist Vyvienne Long decorates the room with deeper tones throughout. Elsewhere, ‘Dark Mornings’ – a first-class graduate from the Matthew Sweet/Ryan Adams/Lyndsey Buckingham finishing school – is still the closest concession to the all-out, Cars-inspired finish that’s distinguished much of Joe’s previous work. And after that it’s just the magic of the soft hush ;- and it’s beautiful. Because for all of it’s allegory and bespoke references [‘the feast of Corpus Christi’, ‘Swastika Laundry’ and ‘the valley of tears’], Joe still finds the real wonder in the smaller, far less abstract moments. The single, ‘Juliette Walking In The Rain’ is about exactly that, a chance encounter with the French actress Juliette Binoche as she makes her way across Meeting House Square in Central Dublin. While for all the swagger on ‘Dark Mornings’, the song ultimately – and maybe invariably? – finds itself dissecting matters of the heart as Joe points out that he’s ‘just looking out the window, waiting for you to wake up’.
And that’s where Joe’s gift lies. The devil may indeed always lurk amidst the detail but it takes the confidence of a master to allow the magic flourish deep inside the quiet. - Blackpool Sentinel
Album of the week - Marty Whelan, RTE Lyric FM
Album of the week - Tom Dunne, Newstalk FM
SHE DARKS ME (2011)
RTE RADIO 1 ALBUM OF THE WEEK
RTE LYRIC FM ALBUM OF THE WEEK (MARTY WHELAN)
A LOST ALBUM WORTH FINDING - THE IRISH TIMES
SHE DARKS ME SHOULD DELIGHT LOYAL FANS. MAY IT WIN MULTITUDES OF NEW CONVERTS. - HOTPRESS
"Joe Chester has become one of the finest songwriters in the country. Each of the nine originals carry the kind of tunes that other bands would kill for. With a voice like a tempered Rufus Wainwright, stripped of theatricality and lowered a pitch or two, it would still sound good if he was singing the phonebook. That said, it’s the lyrics that keep you coming back time and again. Themes of jealousy, heartbreak and desire are given a fresh twist, his mature outlook mixed with images of murder, villains and “sistine chapel faces”. It is stirring stuff. She Darks Me is elegant, measured and all the better for it. High time the listening public caught up with Joe Chester. She Darks Me has all the makings of a sleeper hit." - Hotpress Magazine
With two superb albums (2005’s A Murder of Crows and 2008’s The Tiny Pieces Left Behind), Chester is one of those meticulous types for whom compulsion or irrationality is a rarity. Under these terms (which are by no means limitations), Chester triumphs, as his songwriting clearly benefits from such diligence. Several tracks (notably Acid Rain, Foreign Correspondent and Heart of Stone) bear his hallmark attention to observant detail. Musically, it’s Chester’s usual mix of innate melody and carefully prepared arrangements. - The Irish Times
"Chester’s magic power is the ability to make intricacy seem effortless; to make sounds that are simultaneously singular yet don’t draw attention to themselves. In short, this is elegant music. Josh Rouse and the Avalanches would kill for these hooks. A Dylan cover (“Most Of The Time”) almost slips past unnoticed, so strong are the tracks that surround it." - groovelovesmelody.com
HOPE AGAINST HOPE (2012)
Producer to the stars does it his way.
Joe Chester may be best known for his production work on albums by The Coronas, Ryan Sheridan and Mundy, but his solo work is distinguished by a rare intelligence and attention to detail. And so it proves on his fourth album (arriving barely ten months since his last release), which is as intriguing as it is enjoyable. The opening instrumental, 'Love Pouring Down Like Gravity", with its repeated loop, is a hypnotic, trance-like tune that someone like Massive Attack certainly wouldn't have kicked out of bed. For its part, 'Subway' is a more Eno-inspired sound collage than a song in itself. While there is always an experimental undercurrent of this kind at play within his work, he has an ear for a memorable hook and radio-friendly melody. Thus, switching tack completely, 'Which Way is Out' (featuring vocals from Gemma Hayes) comes across as a Teenage Fanclub meets The Cure, power-pop gem. And the jangly 'Somewhere for the Animals' is a swirling, psychedelic, indie-guitar tune with a driving rhythm that isn't a million miles from The La's.
Elsewhere ' Dark Haired Mistress' is a gorgeous mid-tempo tune with a compelling melody, while the title track, with its ominous piano, bass and drums interplay, sonically recalls the kind of atmospheric territory explored in the '80s by the likes of Talk Talk (on Colour of Spring) and The Blue Nile (A Walk Across The Rooftops)
Well worth investigating. - Colm O'Hare Hotpress Magazine
THE TINY PIECES LEFT BEHIND (2008)
"The good news : Joe Chester has followed up 2005's acclaimed debut, A Murder of Crows, with a humdinger of a second album. Chester provides a welcome antidote to all those vacuous singer-songwriters who for all their emoting don't seem to know what the word emotion means. I am reminded of John Lennon and Neil Young. It's that good. The Tiny Pieces Left Behind is a great album." - Adrienne Murphy - Hot Press.
"Chester's latest work is crammed with sweetly-simplistic, robust pop-rock gems. Maybe This is not Love is a synth- gilded and virile beauty, while The Bodies Start to Move is both butter-smooth and bewilderingly addictive. In all, The Tiny Pieces Left Behind is a delight that should propel Chester towards his rightful spot at the top of our musical food chain." - Tanya Sweeney, State Magazine.
A MURDER OF CROWS (2005)
Its the perfect pop record. Negative feelings, like love lost and relationship break-ups are twisted and shaped into something altogether more encouraging. Theres no room for mellow tracks of acoustic guitars and weepy vocals. Chester is much more constructive and resourceful in taking his beautifully simple songs and using his extensive production knowledge to carefully construct around them. You will be lucky to hear anything more affecting all year . A Murder of Crows is an absolute joy. Every home should have one. - Hot Press Magazine
A modern alternative pop gem, the album boasts intelligent song writing, sparkling melodies and a burning if somewhat humble confidence in its own abilities. - Jim Carroll, The Irish Times
My tip for the top remains, as it has been, Joe Chester. His album is, without doubt, a joy to behold. Its perfect pop, one of the best albums I ever had sent into the show. A treasure! - Tom Dunne
With his debut solo album, A Murder of Crows, Joe Chester shows something of a divine sense of melody and a staunchly religious approach to song writing. Chester shows the kind of song writing smarts that bode well for his future royalty cheques; songs such as A Drop of Rain, Pain, Relieve, How You Wish, You Feel and I Always Think Youre Leaving Me have sumptuous yet simple arrangements and leave a trail of resignation and regret in their wake. Even a cover, Fleetwood Macs Bleed to Love Her is fully Chester-ised in a sublime wash of pop nous and rock charm. A record so good its downright criminal. - Tony Clayton-Lea, The Irish Times
Chester's debut solo album is a perfect pop record. The songs are at once effortless, memorable, hook-laden and a masterclass in subtle dynamics. - The Sunday Times - 101 Albums To Love - October 2017
Joe has gone on to release other solo albums along with performing as part of A Lazarus Soul, The Hedge Schools and , on occasion, The Waterboys. He is what you could describe as an all-rounder. His talent was never underestimated before he debuted as a solo artist: A Murder of Crows fully illustrated what a complete artist he is. - From Buried Treasure Vol. 2 by Dan Hegarty
'Like a seaside town in winter', Chester sings on the first (and title) track, 'or that moment when the summer sun gets covered by a cloud'. This pretty much sets the tone: regret and resignation leavened by simplistic, often sumptuous melodies delivered not with egocentric frills but with a modesty that never tips over into lack of confidence. Rarely for an album of such self-effacement, the quality just doesn't dip: 'Charlie for a Girl' is pure heartache wrapped in a melody that refuses to budge, 'A Safe Place to Hide' is a noble duet with Gemma Hayes, the elegiac, piano-led 'A Drop of Rain' is imbued with a velvety texture that leaves the listener almost lost for words, and 'I Always Think You're Leaving Me' gets away with such a morose title (snap out of it man, for God's sake!) by being one hum-dinger of a tune. Chester even covers a Fleetwood Mac/Lindsey Buckingham track ('Bleed to Love Her'); like every other song on this vivid, delicate, perfect-pop record, it touches on the elusiveness of love, but Chester nails it (and the rest) with all the certainty and precision of a shipwright. - From 101 Irish Records (You Must Hear Before You Die) by Tony Clayton-Lea