Sing Whatever is Well Made

Apr 18

Idiot Songs

Hi folks,

Been a quiet few weeks here but plenty of work going on behind the scenes. My Idiot Songs project with Justin Grounds is growing well - we’ve pretty much all the songs recorded and are hoping for a July/August-ish release. It’s been exciting to record this album; it’s unharnessed and has an immediacy to it…

There’ll be a few shows in May for Idiot Songs and for my own solo stuff so I’ll post the dates for those very shortly.

In the meantime, here’s ‘Nastasya’s Tears’, our first piece from the collection.

See you soon

p

Feb 18

Here’s some words from the talented David Fahey on how he put together the short vid for Lonely Track. Big thanks to him. p

The Lonely Track: David Fahey

The starting point I used for this video clip was the inside cover of Pearse’s Busy Whisper album, the picture of the carnival, I liked that it looked somewhere between a photograph and a painting.

Shortly before beginning the video clip I happened upon a derelict house due for demolition and being the rural-urban explorer I am, I popped in through the broken window.

What once looked like a cozy and loved family home had degraded greatly. I scanned the moldy and dusty bookshelves and saw the previous owner had quite an interest in photography.

I followed the hall into her bedroom. It looked as if she had confined herself to just this room for a number of years staying in bed with a two bar heater. Above her head board was a shelf on which stood many miniature figurines of religious saints and the virgin Mary. Over the years it appeared these had been pushed back further on the shelf, replaced by tiny bottles of Irish whiskey almost exactly the same size as the icons.

I don’t like removing items from places that I find in this state but as I was leaving after photographing the house I spotted some small boxes of old slides the lady had shot of various events long before my birth. Usually these types of houses are demolished along with all of the personal items if the family has not claimed them.

I had to rescue the photographs and give them new life. They were badly damaged and covered in mold, faces faded and unrecognizable. Abstract landscapes emerged as I re-developed them, each a different story with its own mysteries.

When I received Pearse’s beautiful and haunting song The Lonely Track I started with the old slides, some of which took hours to burn light through. With the song being in the third person and the characters with their own names and tales, this was as much a mystery as the photos. Ethereal and of another time…

David Fahey

Dec 22

2012 albums

I’ve not heard every Irish album over the last twelve months, I’ve missed loads of course, but these are ones I’ve liked (not in order of preference or anything). I’ve been playing from the following collections on my show over on Raidió na Life:

House of Cosy Cushions – Haunt Me Sweetly

Mumblin’ Deaf Ro – Dictionary Crimes

Katie Kim – Cover and Flood

Cast of Cheers – Family

Adrian Crowley – I see Three Birds Flying

Myles Manley and the Little People – Rock n’ Roll Vicar/ Rock n Roll Priest

Deaf Joe – Burrowings

Dylan Tighe - Record

Spook of the Thirteenth Lock - The Brutal Here and Now

Seti the First – Melting Cavalry

Eric McGrath – Little Ripples

OCHO – Young Hunting

Peter Doran – Overhead the Stars

Harry Bird and The Rubber Wellies – The Bones on Black

The Gandhis – After Autumn

My own album In Movement also came out in June.

Fair play to it.

Nov 24

harmlessnay:

You have to hand it to Young Hearts Run Free, each and every time they pull incredible line-ups out of the bag, bringing people down to the curious corner of Newmarket in Dublin 8 for goodhearted BYOB events from which all proceeds go to the Simon Community. And as well we all know, there’s something particularly hard-hitting about homelessness in the winter, especially the ostentatious month of December.

On the YHRF line-up for 8 December at the Newmarket Co-op are: Dónal Lunny (Planxty), The Spook Of The Thirteenth Lock, Mumblin Deaf Ro, OCHO, Niamh DeBarra, The Strypes, Pearse McGloughlin, Margie Lewis and the Young Hearts Choir along with special guests, and a set by comedian David O’Doherty, as well as DJ sets by Elastic Witch, Skinny Wolves, Greenbeat vs. Brainbeat and Eamon Sweeney.

Admission is €16, with €1 going to the Co-Op and the bulk to Dublin’s Simon Community.

Nov 20

Nov 13

This was the beautiful setting for the recent

Fading Light Festival

curated by Emmet Condon

Nov 6

The Brown Bread Mixtape is always special, but this one had some indescribable quality. Maybe it was because it was Halloween. Lots of us were dressed up. Bram Stoker flickered in the background. It was my last Dublin show of the year.

Violins squawked and then soared euphonically and comic sketches hit exactly the right note and when I sang I felt it in my spirit and wild visuals flickered evocatively and there was the unassuming poetry of John Cummings and it flowed in that hippie-hop way that is his wont, and nocturnes swelled, and there were familiar faces and one who was unrecognizable as a clown and there was the sense that this is a great group of people gathered here in this moment and something about that, about all of that was deeply moving.

So hats off to you brethren. And hats off to the Aidans, to the Kalles and Emmets who invest so much (more on that later). The world is getting better. Idiot songs are waiting. Urchins are crouching. I play Sligo on December 1^st in McGarrigle’s.

Oct 3

HWCH 2012 / GRAND SOCIAL / SAT 8.30

Sep 27

In Movement

Sep 21

Going Away

I feel so strongly about this song. I love it so much. That doesn’t mean you should too though (often it means the opposite!)

I’d been reading The Essential Tales of Chekov about the time I wrote Going Away – and also had been writing some short stories. The mood of this song just appeared to me. It can be annoying when people say that, but it’s true in this instance.

The song is about the moment of leaving, about the turning from waiting, from the cold sea bite, from desolation.

Sing Whatever is Well Made

words and news from Pearse.

Idiot Songs

2012 albums