On a warm Saturday afternoon at Boston Calling, a crowd gathered by the Blue Stage expecting something new. What they got was something timeless.
In front of its first American festival audience, folk band Amble performed a set that transported its listeners into the misty romance of the Irish countryside.
Just three years old, Amble was formed in 2022 and is in the midst of a meteoric rise to success. Finishing off a tour through Ireland and the UK, the band is set to kick off a six-month sold-out world tour spanning 36 cities in 13 countries. The band will start its journey by opening for Hozier in June at Fenway Park.
Musical trio Robbie Cunningham, Ross McNerney, and Oisin McCaffrey originally banded together to play gigs in pubs around Ireland, inspired by their mutual love for music and performance, before deciding to quit their day jobs and commit to music full time.
“Money comes and goes,” said McCaffrey. “Your job is kind of your life, so it’s important to love it if you can.”
In just three years, the trio has carved out a unique space in modern folk. Its 2024 debut EP, Of Land and Sea, introduced audiences to its signature blend of intimate storytelling and traditional Irish melodies. Songs like “Lonely Island” and “Mary’s Pub” caught fire with listeners, earning the band a loyal following.
One day before its Boston Calling debut, Amble dropped its debut full-length album, Reverie, a project that encapsulates the heart of their journey.
Reverie consists of fourteen tracks, all recorded live in just a few takes. The album features Amble’s aforementioned popular singles along with eight new tracks, such as “Schoolyard Days” and “Little White Chapel.” The album is steeped in intentionality, including the title: A reverie is a state of absent-minded daydreaming, a fantastical trance.
This spirit of Irish culture is showcased in Reverie through and through, including the album cover: a photo of lead vocalist Cunningham and his brother as children.
“There’s an innocence and happiness and purity to it, and that’s what we wanted Reverie to be,” said Cunningham.
Part of Amble’s magic lies in the evocative simplicity of its music. Reverie was performed at Boston Calling with only acoustic instruments—no drums, synth, piano, or bass. Amble’s trademark lyrical sound is created with the help of McNerney, who primarily plays the mandolin and the bouzouki.
While its instruments lack significant diversity, Amble’s music is anything but uniform. The songs pack a nostalgic punch, rich with an abundance of passionate energy and group chemistry that makes listeners feel the band’s joy for performing.
For Amble, the album reflects a tradition of storytelling.
“We always want to get a story across,” said Cunningham. “Since we’ve met, I think that we bonded over how the way the three of us write is all about telling stories and creating real music. I think we tell stories and we do it good.”
For McNerney, the album represents who Amble is as a band.
“We were very adamant that the debut album would represent this last two years of us, and it’s a collection of the old and new, essentially, but as a sound, it’s just Amble,” McNerney said. “It’s three of us, and that’s all it is.”
Rooted in the traditions of Irish folk, Amble’s music is more than just melody—it is memory. Cunningham explained how the three men, while writing independently of each other, shared experiences of archetypes within their rural Irish towns.
“There’s similar men and women in pubs and across Ireland, you know,” said Cunningham. “Someone that I know—Ross knows a version of that person in his village.”
It’s this collective understanding of place, people, and purpose that fuels their music. And that cultural immersion, McNerney adds, starts early.
“You just grow up with this culture of storytelling that you don’t really think about, and then … you wonder why you’re writing about lakes and mountains, but it’s clearly been in you from how you grow up,” said McNerney.
In just a few years, the band has been able to achieve over 100 million streams and 100,000 tickets sold worldwide. More than a flash-in-the-pan success, Amble is quietly redefining Irish folk for a global stage, staying rooted in tradition while capturing a generation hungry for authenticity.
By the time the final mandolin note had echoed in the Boston afternoon, Amble had provided more than music—it reminded the crowd of the stories we carry and the songs that help us hold them. Amble is poised to provide a much-needed reminder of the importance of shared memory to American audiences at a time when community is more crucial than ever.
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