The Banshees of Inisherin (The Banshees of Inisherin)

There is peat smoke and Atlantic spray in Burwell's score for Inisherin, but mostly there is grief made rhythmic. The primary theme moves in a slow waltz meter that feels less like dance music than like the rocking of someone absorbing an unbearable truth. Traditional Irish melodic sensibility is present in the modal turns, but the instrumentation keeps it from becoming picturesque — strings sawing in the lower registers, a particular thinness in the higher voices that sounds like something wearing away. The emotional territory is male sorrow specifically: the kind that doesn't weep openly but calcifies into stubbornness. There's a passage where the theme seems to resolve and then doesn't, pulling back into dissonance like a man who could apologize but won't. Beauty and brutality sit at the same table throughout, the landscape gorgeous and indifferent to human suffering. This is music for contemplating irreversible decisions — the kind you made cleanly at the time and have been living inside of ever since.