6 of the best Irish songs this week

Cable Boy

Purple (End Of The World)

Taking a turn into darker, moodier style Dublin band Cable Boy bring a self-described “goth disco” style to their new single, complete with spoken word verses.

‘Purple (End Of The World)’ is inspired by I Saw The TV Glow’ and the work of David Lynch, and was recorded and co-produced with AdamShanahan (Shiv, Bobbi Arlo, Melina Malone) and David Tapley (Tandem Felix).

Cable Boy will play at headline show on the 29th of May in the Bello Bar.

$ona Blu€

Ice And Blues

The Irish Sri-Lankan artist $ONA BLU€ is making some of the most interesting emerging music in Ireland right now, and following on from recent features for tracks ‘Good 4 You’ and the Gaviibaby-assisted ‘Pious’.

‘Ice And Blues’ reminds me Martina Topley-Bird especially in $ONA’s bluesy soul-filled voice. The song was produced by GNS, and was inspired by the Jordan Peele film Get Out.

Ice And blues is a song about how having your expectations too high could really damage you. In a way you’re setting yourself up to be disappointed and your heart to be broken. Especially in a situation where most people get stuck. Loving somebody for the potential you see in them, but in reality the other person is just happy that they could behave any way and give the absolute bare minimum because they know that your love for them won’t let you abandon them.

lullahush

Jimmy An Chladaigh

The Irish producer Daniel McIntyre’s Ithaca album explores Irish traditional culture through the lens of a digital workstation interface, applying electronic sensibilities and techniques to ancient instrument sounds.

Often feeling like an exploratory collage of the source materila and its modern cousin, Ithaca is a busy and fizzy album that feels like its excavating the walls between then and now, finding a liminal place for the two practices of music to co-exist.

Irish traditional melodies are processed and bent to a digital space, further developing the renewal of interest in traditional sounds in recent years her, and the presence of Saileog Ní Cheannabháin ( ‘An Droighneán Donn’), Maija Sofia ( ‘Jimmy An Chladaigh’ / ”Maija an Uisce’) and recordings of Irish keening as on last year’s essential Irish release Mo Léan by Róis.

‘Jimmy An Chladaigh’ with its harp whirlwinds, bass hits, spoken word about music creation and Sofia’s anchoring presence make it feel like the perfect synthesis of these two worlds

“That’s grand, now, that’s lovely now”.

Paddy Hanna

Tuscon Arizona

Dublin singer-songwriter Paddy Hanna gave up music in the couple of years before his new album Oylegate was made. Family and friends convinced him to keep at it, and producer and collaborator Daniel Fox also encouraged this fifth album, after a trad-style release was abandoned.

Oylegate was written while watching Solaris with the sound off at home, on piano and it features Hanna’s trademark classic songwriting-tinged craft, and the superlative ‘Harry Dean’ and ‘Oylegate Station’ – songs that have a “contrast of warmth and detachment, of intimate revelation and surreal detour.”

A revelation since the release on Friday is the swooning ballad ‘Tucson Arizona’, which amps up the ’80s synths and drums to match Hanna’s best recorded vocal committed to tape yet.

Paddy’s Irish tour starts April 17th and takes in Dublin, Limerick, Wexford, Belfast, Cork before Festivals shows at When Next We Meet and Beyond the Pale.

LIL **** & Lil Skag

BEBO BBY V2

Alex Gough, Lil Skag and lil beep feature on a bass-rumbling slapper from !important Audio’s recently revived issue series.

!important audio are a a collective releasing new music on the first Friday of every second month.

Tebi Rex, Natalya O’Flaherty

I’m Cooked, I’m Done

“We don’t usually do love songs. But we’re sorta on a love buzz now, at the end I suppose. It’d be a shame not to write one more….”

As Tebi Rex approach the end of the project, finality and ending is a chief preoccupation for the closing chapter. We’ve already felt that with ‘fin’, and ‘I’m cooked, I’m done’ with a spoken verse by Dublin poet Natalya O’Flaherty

‘I’m cooked, I’m done.’ is a love song – an ode to the moment that the single version of you dies. You fall in love for the first time, then for the last time. A partner becomes a husband. Your school romance moves further and further away. Passion becomes a tender memory. Unfamiliarity turns to devotion. Music, people, life…you love for as long as you can. Until the end.

‘I’m cooked, I’m done.’ was central to Max Zanga’s debut play Fin. – The Harbinger of Death, staged at Smock Alley Theatre as part of Scene + Heard Festival.