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Today Irish artist Sinead O’Brien releases her debut album ‘Time Bend and Break The Bower’ via Chess Club Records. Sinead recently performed on Later… with Jools Holland and will be embarking on an instore tour this week. O’Brien will also play a string of festivals including Glastonbury ahead of her massive autumn UK, Ireland and European tours including London’s Lafayette – the full list of live dates is below.
“The story of the album is built up in layers; one song giving context to the next” explains Sinead; “I thought about becoming undressed; testing my ideas, my voice. Working myself out across themes of identity, curiosity, creative process. Experimenting with the form and shape of language, using tone and delivery to get to the immediate centre of what I am saying. The record opens and closes with poems, these tracks have a really clear direction – a form which is set apart from the ‘songs’. I hold stops in different places, moving emphatically through the lyrics, changing the meaning. No punctuation – only the voice mapping out the way.”
The album title “Time Bend and Break The Bower”, from the song ‘Multitudes’, came into my head and made its demands, an idea that pressed on me throughout the record. It has a very active role. The clock symbol is enlarged, it looms like a moon over my activity watching, counting me down to zero. Dripping with self-sabotage and the feeling of being chased; it pulls and pushes against the verses which talk of ’Multitudes’; the things that faithfully come back – the images, the words, creativity. It is creativity itself.”
Communing at the triangulation of words, music and image, O’Brien has always conjured powerful worlds: but none more powerful, or as immersive, than on her debut record. In the space that exists between her delivery – at once wry, silky, vicious, and self-assured – and the music – a dynamic, dancing call-and-response from her collaborators, guitarist Julian Hanson and drummer Oscar Robertson – lies a productive tension. Using a method of creating on-instinct, in constant communication with multisensory cues, O’Brien is carving out a space as a musical oracle for an ever-shifting era. The 11-track album was produced by super-producer Dan Carey (Fontaines DC, Wet Leg, Squid, Black Midi, Foals, Kae Tempest) and recorded in his south London studio Mr Dan’s, with an all-female team creating the album’s visuals (Chloe Le Drezen, Saskia Dixie and Sarah Piantadosi).
“The story of the album is built up in layers; one song giving context to the next” explains Sinead; “I thought about becoming undressed; testing my ideas, my voice. Working myself out across themes of identity, curiosity, creative process. Experimenting with the form and shape of language, using tone and delivery to get to the immediate centre of what I am saying. The record opens and closes with poems, these tracks have a really clear direction – a form which is set apart from the ‘songs’. I hold stops in different places, moving emphatically through the lyrics, changing the meaning. No punctuation – only the voice mapping out the way.”
Since 2020, O’Brien has garnered international critical acclaim from titles like Rolling Stone, DIY, Dazed, Dork, Loud & Quiet, NME, Paste, Stereogum, The FADER, The Guardian, The Quietus, and AnOther Magazine, among others. O’Brien has also been consistently supported on national radio: she counts Jack Saunders at BBC Radio 1, and Steve Lamacq and Amy Lamé at BBC Radio 6 Music as champions of her music, with the latter station giving two tracks a spot on their B List. And O’Brien is building on her US support from the likes of Seattle’s KEXP alongside appearances at SXSW – in virtual form in 2021, and with a much lauded live run with her band in Texas earlier this spring.
With a background on the design teams for John Galliano and, later, Vivienne Westwood, it’s no surprise that raven-haired O’Brien’s cultural touchstones also span a rich history of art, photography, film, dance and movement: from Helmut Newton femme fatales and Henri Cartier-Bresson’s bleak landscapes, to modern performance by Michael Clark, to the writings of Virginia Woolf and Samuel Beckett. Recently also tapped by Gucci to perform, it’s clear that O’Brien’s esoteric instincts will continue to inspire those beyond the industry as well as within it.
Time Bend And Break The Bower album tracklisting:
1. Pain Is The Fashion Of The Spirit
2. Salt
3. Girlkind
4. End Of Days
5. Like Culture
6. The Rarest Kind
7. Holy Country
8. Spare For My Size, Me
9. There Are Good Times Coming
10. Multitudes
11. Go Again
Upcoming Live Dates:
June 2022
10/06 – Album Instore: Banquet, Kingston
12/06 – St Anne’s Park, Dublin (Duran Duran Support)
14/06 – Album Instore : Rough Trade Nottingham
15/06 – Album Instore : Rough Trade Bristol
16/06 – Album Instore : Rough Trade East
17/06 – Album Instore : Resident Brighton
17/06 – 19/06 – Body & Soul, Ballinlough Castle, Ireland
24/06-26/06 – Glastonbury Festival
July 2022
02/07 – Europavox Festival, France
29/07-31/07 – All Together Now, Co Waterford, Ireland
August 2022
11/08- 13/08 – Haldern Pop Festival, Germany
10/08 -23/08 -Winterthurer Musikfestwochen 2022 , Stadtkirche, Winterthur, Switzerland
September 2022
01/09 – 04/09 – Into The Great Wide Open, Vlieland, Netherlands
01/09 – 04/09 – End Of The Road Festival, Larmer Tree Gardens, Wiltshire
15/09 – Le Grand Mix, Tourcoing, France
16/09 – Le Point Éphémère, Paris, France
17/09 – Rotown, Rotterdam, Netherlands
18/09 – Paradiso Noord, Amsterdam, Netherlands
20/09 – Cassiopeia, Berlin, Germany
21/09 – Loppen, Copenhagen, Denmark
22/09 – Taverna Brillo, Stockholm, Sweden
25/09 – Bumann & SOHN, Cologne, Germany
26/09 – Trix, Antwerp, Belgium
October 2022 – UK and Ireland headline tour
09/10 – Cluny 2, Newcastle, UK
10/10 – King Tuts Wah Wah Hut, Glasgow, UK
11/10 – Brudenell Social Club, Leeds, UK
12/10 – Deaf Institute, Manchester, UK
14/10 – Bodega, Nottingham, UK
15/10 – Future Days, The Crossing, Birmingham, UK
17/10 – Lafayette, London, UK
19/10 – Green Door Store, Brighton, UK
20/10 – Ramsgate Music Hall, Ramsgate, UK
21/10 – Exchange, Bristol, UK
26/10 – Cyprus Avenue, Cork, Ireland
27/10 – Whelans, Dublin, Ireland
28/10 – Black Box, Belfast, UK
29/10 – Dolans Warehouse, Limerick, Ireland
November 2022 – Belle and Sebastian UK Support Tour
14/11 – Roundhouse, London
17/11 – O2 Academy, Sheffield
24/11 – O2 City Hall, Newcastle
27/11 – Corn Exchange, Cambridge
28/11 – O2 Academy, Birmingham
29/11 – Guildhall, Southampton
30/11 – Brighton Dome, Brighton
January 2023
6/01 – Rockaway Beach, Butlins, Bognor Regis, UK
FOLLOW SINEAD O’BRIEN
My life is a soundtrack, i track my life through music, photography is my passion, my escape, my expression. Without both i have pieces missing, thankfully i’m blessed and get to combine both.
Born in Manchester, lived in Australia for 22 years where i was heavily involved in the Australian Music Industry, firstly in bands (Singer) and then managing bands (all original), I moved back to the UK, Wales specifically 10 years ago and married my childhood sweetheart and life is good.
