The Point of Everything The Point Of Everything

Dublin-born, London-based Constance Keane aka Fears released her second album affinity on Tulle Records in March 2024. She talks through the 10 tracks on the album on this episode of the TPOE podcast. One part of the post-punk band M(h)aol, she also discusses their past year and latest single 'Pursuit', the first on which Keane takes lead vocals.
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Affinity follows her critically acclaimed 2021 debut album Oíche, that landed in the UK vinyl album charts, was chosen by readers of The Guardian as an album of the year, and received widespread radio support for debut single 'Tonnta''. The 10 tracks that make up affinity draw on human connection, intimacy, and 
moments of peace in a city; combining reflective electronics, acoustic samples, and stirring vocals with organic visuals, blurring the boundaries between music and visual art. Her minimalist yet striking approach centres on emotive subjects which are all-at-once deeply personal yet remarkably universal. Written and recorded between London, New York, and Dublin, affinity is a melancholy and at times playful exploration of the relationship 
between Fears’ physical surroundings and the work she creates.
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Fears plays the Sugar Club, Dublin, on June 1. Tickets: https://singularartists.ie/show/fears/

Buy Fears - affinity on Bandcamp: https://fearsrecords.bandcamp.com/album/affinity

Kieran McFeely aka Simple Kid released two acclaimed albums in the noughties before seeming to disappear around 2008. He sold his guitar and packed away his gear. A decade would pass before he went looking for the boxes in his attic. Simple Kid released third album Simple Kid 3: Health & Safety in 2022, and played a show at Whelan's in April 2023.

Now, Simple Kid plays the Grand Social in Dublin on Saturday, May 4, and Cyprus Avenue, Cork, on Sunday, May 5, presented by Singular Artists. From Cork, it will be his first hometown show in 17 years. Ahead of the shows, he talks on the TPOE podcast about his journey, how he came back to the Simple Kid project after 10 years not thinking about it. We talk about his old band the V Necks/The Young Offenders, and how that led to his solo project in the early 2000s. Acclaim, charting, and an appearance on 'Later with Jools Holland' all followed.

Buy tickets for Simple Kid live at the Grand Social and Cyprus Avenue: https://singularartists.ie/show/simple-kid-2024/
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Press release:
Once upon a time, back in 2003, a young hopeful by the name of Simple Kid emerged with his first solo album, Simple Kid 1: full of optimism and arrogance, he was sure of his place in the Rock n Roll Hall of Fame. He garnered some awards nominations, some high profile tours, some good times, some bad. Like many before and since, he was ‘the next big thing’ with a UK Top 40, appearances on ‘Later With Jools’, Glastonbury slots and prestigious touring.

In 2008, he followed this up with Simple Kid 2: not so many awards, not so much TV, lots of touring but running out of money, hair receding, girlfriend pregnant.

Then along came ‘life’. And life said that Simple Kid needed to change the chapter in his book, to move on. So Simple Kid became Kieran and started to do things like: get a job, get tired, raise children, have financial struggles. Still some good times, some bad. But secretly in 2018, Kieran bought a guitar, a microphone and some speakers and started recording quietly in his loft. He didn’t tell anyone, not even his family.

He started uploading songs to YouTube and eventually released 13 of these songs as an album called ‘Simple Kid 3: Health & Safety’ in 2022. Kieran has now changed his name back to Simple Kid and decided to come out to play again. He imagines there will be some good times, some bad.

Anamoe Drive is the solo project of Thumper frontman and guitarist Oisín Leahy Furlong. He released his debut album Breakfast in Bed via Faction Records on March 8 and talks through it track by track on this episode of the TPOE podcast.

Oisin says Breakfast in Bed is a breakup album told in three parts. The non-linear narrative flits between the throes of heartbreak to the bliss of new love, from the depths of loneliness, to the slow dissipating of these feelings in the rearview mirror. The album’s title reflects different meanings depending on which song you view it through - from a kind gesture, to a lonely act, to the masticating of these themes in solitude. It also doubles as the place where most of these songs were written - perched on a bed, the morning after the night before, recapping these events in song. He says influences range from Sparklehorse to The Microphones, Bright Eyes to The Beach Boys, and Big Thief to Real Estate.

Buy Breakfast in Bed: https://anamoedrive.bandcamp.com/

Tracklisting
1. The Same Asylum
2. Goodbye & Goodluck
3. Out Like a Light
4. Bulb
5. The Finder's Keeper
6. Long Time Coming
7. Procrastination
8. NYC
9. Holiday Song
10. Don't Walk the Wrong One Home

Singer/bassist Julie Hough and guitarist Matthew Harris from Dublin-based pop-punk trio Havvk talk through all the tracks on their third album To Fall Asleep, released on Veta Records.

Julie's battles with insomnia are one of the influences on the album. She says: “I was waking up with an unshakable feeling of urgency, like I was forgetting something and then letting my thoughts spiral for hours. Sleep was something I had always taken for granted, so at first this felt like a huge betrayal from my body. But it wasn’t really. Actually, it was my body trying to tell me something. I had to really listen to it, and examine how honestly I was living my life, and how much energy I was giving to things that I didn’t have the capacity for."

To Fall Asleep tracklisting:
1. Daylight Robbery
2. Expiry
3. Strong Possibility
4. You Say You Won’t (played in intro)
5. White Noise
6. To Fall Asleep
7. Take It From Me
8. Keep It to Myself
9. City Creep
10. Waste of Time
11. Nobody Told You (outro music)

Buy To Fall Asleep on Bandcamp: https://havvk.bandcamp.com/album/to-fall-asleep

Dublin singer-songwrriter Danny Carroll released his debut solo album I am the Cheese on March 1. He talks through the nine tracks on this TPOE 304.
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Press release: Part of the Dublin music scene for years, Danny Carroll is co-curator of A Litany Of Failures compilation series showcasing independent artists from across Ireland.  Having gigged in various projects, he’s opened for kindred spirits such as Jeffrey Lewis and Pavement guitarist Spiral Stairs before the time came to work on his debut solo album. Enlisting the help of Belfast based producer Chris W. Ryan (New Dad, Just Mustard, Robocobra Quartet), the two developed songs with a playful, anything goes approach, with Carroll’s songs likened to softer touchstones of indie rock - Silver Jews, Jonathan Richman, and Lee Hazlewood.
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Danny explains: I Am The Cheese is an album I initially recorded with Chris W. Ryan in a week in June 2021. We did this in a terraced house in East Belfast - visited by Carl Eccles on two occasions to play guitar and sing some backing vocals. In the months that followed, Finn McCarthy emailed me bass parts, and I added various bells and whistles to the songs from a flat on North Circular Road in Dublin 7. Laura Ryder also contributed piano to the song Cheesemonger. The drums were performed and recorded by Chris on one day in January 2022 in Start Together Studios. He then mixed the album, and eventually I got it mastered by the late, great John Davis (Blur, The XX, Careerist) who passed away in September 2023.

I've sat on the album a long time, in part down due to vinyl pressing, in part due to personal reasons. The mental fortitude it takes to independently 'emerge' and 'unleash' is not always forthcoming. At this point the album feels like a distant document. Nevertheless, it's still something I'm happy to have made for myself.

The title is taken from the 1977 Robert Cormier YA novel, which haunted my adolescence. The final lines of the novel refer back to the folk song 'The Farmer In The Dell':
"The cheese stands alone.
The cheese stands alone.
Hi-ho, the derry-o!
The cheese stands alone"

For a number of reasons it felt fitting to lift that title.
credits

Singer-songwriter Niamh Bury released her debut solo album Yellow Roses on March 29 via Claddagh Records. Produced by Brían Mac Gloinn (Ye Vagabonds), it features Caimin Gilmore and Kate Ellis (Crash Ensemble) and Ryan Hargodan (Rachael Lavelle), but it is Bury's amazing voice that stands out as she weaves tales about travel, mysticism, and domesticity, with a theme of female empowerment coming through, particularly when she sings of her mother on one song and her grandmother on the title track. Comprising nine original tracks and one interpretation of an older song ('Lovely Adam'), Niamh Bury talks through Yellow Roses on this episode of the TPOE podcast.

Niamh Bury tour dates:
April 12: American Bar, Belfast
April 21: Róisín Dubh, Galway
April 24: Upstairs at Dolan's, Limerick
April 25: Cleere's, Kilkenny
April 26: Winthrop Avenue, Cork
April 28: Whelan's, Dublin

Buy Yellow Roses: https://www.niamhbury.com/