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Release Date : 6th November 2020
Seamus Fogarty releases his new album, ‘A Bag Of Eyes’. This is Fogarty’s third
album – a wholly different sonic prospect to 2017’s much-lauded ‘The Curious Hand’. Weary of the guitar, and seeking something darker than its predecessor, he chose to
lean more heavily on synths and drum machines and, additionally, to self-produce.
“It was about creating and exploring new sound worlds,” Fogarty says.
“Experimenting with new ways of incorporating electronics into the songwriting
process, and in some cases dispensing with conventional songwriting processes
altogether.” On ‘A Bag OF Eyes’ there is industrial judder, slacker-fuzz guitar, a cacophony of
saxophones. On one track, ring-modulated drums kick in with oscillating fury.
Another moves from 90s shit-hole grunge venue to sleazy jazz joint in four minutes.
Whilst on a third a synth is deployed, with the express purpose of sawing the
listener’s ears in half, Fogarty attests. However, beneath them all lie fragments of melody, image, drone; a flicker of banjo,
an electronic pulse. “I like to purposely make music that clashes with the more
traditional stuff that I do,” he says. Fogarty’s celebrated storytelling is at home in this new sound world, rambling
between the fantastical and the mundane: nuns playing volleyball, horses on
clifftops, lives glimpsed through rear windows. There are echoes of his own past, the
loss of dear friends. Ireland, London and two views of San Francisco, 15 years apart.
It is bus stops, house fires and Jimmy Stewart. ‘A Bag Of Eyes’ was recorded across London, Kent and East Sussex and features
Fogarty’s partner Emma Smith, Meilyr Jones, long-time collaborators Leo Abrahams,
Aram Zarikian and John Fogarty, as well as someone slightly more unexpected, an
audience member recorded live at one of Seamus’ gigs in Dublin. If there is a restlessness to these songs it is there not only in their geographical
sweep, their mingling of memory and nostalgia, but also in their sense of invention:
audience anecdotes, a trad ballad cover, electronic fury, dirty guitar solos, all
pressed fiercely together into something that feels startling and new and explorative. The artwork for ‘A Bag Of Eyes’ is by songwriter Billy Steinberg (‘Like A Virgin’,
‘Eternal Flame’) and is taken from an illustration of his original lyrics to the Divinyls’
hit ‘I Touch Myself’. CD in mini-gatefold with 12-page booklet. 140g vinyl in 3mm spined outer sleeve, printed inner sleeve and digital download
card. Available to independent retailers on violet coloured 140g vinyl in 3mm spined outer
sleeve, printed inner sleeve and digital download card.
