Polymath maverick Dan MacDonald continues to plough his own outré field with Spitzer Space Telescope.

Release Date: Album – 21st November 2025. Single – 18th November 2025

Label: Broadside Hacks

Format: Digital / Vinyl (Sampler) / Cassette (III)

CONFUSING

It’s all a bit confusing, really, with a new extended single being released a couple of days ahead a new album. Entitled as a sampler, the album is more a handy compendium, drawing together the 3 singles this, can I say, engaging oddball has produced in recent times. Except it doesn’t include 2 of the 4 songs from III, the single, out the same day. Got that? Read on.

POLYMATH MAVERICK

Dan MacDonald is just the sort of polymath maverick that could really only exist on the contrarian folk outlier magnet of Broadside Hacks. To be fair, he has been ploughing his own outré field for some time, ahead the London based label/collective welcoming him into their ranks, to be alongside the Goblin Band, Gwenifer Raymond and more. Simultaneously a painter in oils and a graphic designer, MacDonald began his journey as Spitzer Space Telescope in Michigan, then becoming part of a vibrant Chicago folk scene, then moving to, first, Ireland and, now, this country. With a bulging back-pack of self-penned songs, all sound ancient and drawn from deep and dusty wells of a sepia past, with his delivery enhancing that illusion still further. If label-mates the Goblin Band give off fumes of a Dickensian London, McDonald is via Mark Twain, if with an added rakish dash of James Joyce.

BAREFOOT PREACHER

So, The Spitzer Space Telescope Sampler first, which opens with The Great Ascender. This also appears on the near contemporaneously released single. This is a rich stew of acapella voices, singing what sounds like the sort of hymn that would be sung in the street, by a barefoot preacher and his ragged acolytes, in shaky black and white newsreel footage, the moving image full of breaks and blurs. The voices are far from elegant, but hang in perfectly together, anchored by MacDonald’s rusty honk. It is fabulous, and, if you listen carefully, religion is the last thing on his mind.

Some scratchy fiddle and a stomping heel beckon in the Appalachian/Dublin hybrid howl of The Poor Soldier. With both the melody, whoops and all, and the lyric affecting a hardcore authenticity, it is a song I can feel soon travelling into many a late night session at any folk festival around the world. It isn’t necessarily an easy listen, and may frighten those unfamiliar or unattuned. Scything through the styles, Kayne In The Orchard then describes an actual trip to Cornwall, with more trad.arr. than you would deem possible in a new song and still remain outside parody or pastiche. The chorus of “high grow the hedger-row high and high the hedger-row green-o” will stick like glue to your cortex, and is likely to slip out at unexpected moments, alarming family and workmates alike.

CLANCY BROTHERS ON PSYCHEDELIC SCRUMPY

Dunning Town is then a rapid-fire banjo driven travelogue into parts unknown, where tie-dye Aran sweaters are paired with mohicans, the Clancy Brothers on psychedelic scrumpy. Suddenly it is 1963, as MacDonald channels a very early Dylan for Field Of Men, capturing the rudimentary rhythmic strum of guitar perfectly, missing only the screech of harmonica. A side drum then taps and a string drone drones for the very Goblin Band alike territory of Sly Johnny Wood. I don’t know about you, but I am equally exhilarated and exhausted by this whirlwind tour through the traditions.

Having said, Midwest Tribute Song is almost too much, with a cacophony as each line ends, launched high and wild. Almost too much, but by remaining in the warped credibility that has now become normal, it works, if not necessarily the song to introduce someone new to the singer. Corn Holler is much more palatable, if with a palpable hit of Way Down Yonder In A Minor Key sneaking through, with ragged vocal, footstomp and fiddle. Miser may or not be in a foreign language, or at least it starts that way, sounding not unlike Gallic retrovivalists, Malicorne, before becoming a bizarre handclapped harmony plainsong in English. I can really see why Broadside Hacks had to have him in their ranks.

IF YOU WANT TO BE A BARD?

Rovin’ Is Me Pleasure is another of the banjo fuelled rollicks he excels at, that, as well as showing off his acknowledged debt to the Clancy Brothers, suggests the Dubliners are also high on his home playlist. Quite, quite different is O Misfortune I Know, a poignant wail of sorrow, set to a slow trickling guitar, a fusion of Wild Rover with Hard Times Of Old England, and delivered like that Holy Modal Rounders song from Easy Rider.

Hard Luck Johnny has him now channeling the spirit of Ewan MacColl, and is an extraordinary two and a half minutes, from the finger in the ear vocal, to the instrumental backing of mandolin, accordion and concertina, subjected to a deliberate manipulated distort. I won’t be the first to check my equipment and try an alternative platform. (See below!) and if that was bizarre, closer, Five Oaks In A Ring is weirder still, as MacDonald jumps to falsetto. As bonkers as bonzo, the shock is that it doesn’t even feel out of place.

Moving to the single/EP, call it what you will, this has two songs that aren’t on the sampler and two, Kayne In The Orchard and O Misfortune I Know. All You Girls Ashore is the first, and is unusual, as the melody isn’t one of MacDonald’s own, being rather from an old French whaling song. Clearly a shanty, the new words are his impression of what they might have been, rather than any direct translation. It is a hoot. Veritas is the second, and is about Galileo, the telescope man. Set to banjo, this is how Loudon Wainwright might sound, confined to a straitjacket. This isn’t even a criticism, just an observation.

STRANGELY COMPULSIVE

I suspect you won’t hear anything more unusual than MacDonald this year; indeed, I’d worry if you did. I find his work strangely compulsive and will certainly be revisiting these songs over the festive period, possibly after Dylan’s Christmas In The Heart, to which the sampler makes an awkward companion.

Here’s that altogether sectionable Hard Luck Johnny:

Spitzer Space Telescope: Bandcamp

At The Barrier: Facebook / X / Instagram