Slowcity.ca Open Mice with PUP, Haviah Mighty, Romana, Mobley, LAL, Local Natives, HEALTH, and Partner

By Will McGuirk

We have been in this now for some months. Closer to the end than the beginning, no idea, closer to the beginning than the end, no idea, but of the now, musicians are present and in this present presenting the new now.

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PUP have a new most relevantly titled EP, ‘This Place Sucks Ass’. This PSA will be out on Little Dipper Records Oct 23 2020. The Ep consists of tracks which didn’t make the cut for “Morbid Stuff’, among them “Nothing Changes” and “Floodgates. There is also a cover of Grandaddy’s “A.M. 180”. Lead single is “Rot”. Cheery as a new puppy are PUP.

“Literally any city, whether it was Lethbridge, Alberta, or New York City, we’d be like, ‘This place sucks ass.’ We have so much negativity, and sometimes it becomes so extreme and ridiculous that we start to find it funny. But at this moment in time, it feels so fucking real. Wherever you are, it sucks ass right now. So, wherever you live, whatever your circumstances, this is an EP about the place you’re from, and the place you're at now.” - Stefan Babcock

Buy the vinyl here ->

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“As we develop a more keen sense of necessary change in this country, and as COVID 19 simultaneously leaves us in a state of uncertainty, we need a reminder – in hypeman form – to find our new state of normalcy. We have to continue to strive towards our goals, yearning to find success despite these setbacks. Bag Up is the celebration of that yearning” - Haviah Mighty

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“Growing up, I was made fun of by family and community for the ‘darkness’ of my skin - my own parents told me not to play in the sun! Shadeism or colourism is a form of anti-Blackness and a massive issue in the South Asian community and other communities of colour. Europeans asserted a colour-based hierarchy in the colonies they invaded centuries ago that to this day play a role in the skin discrimination people of colour face within their own communities. This video is the counterpart to a song that celebrates me finally coming out from hiding in the shade I was thrown and unlearning Eurocentric ideals of beauty.” - Romana

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“I want to draw people in with that serotonin hit you get from a catchy, well-crafted song. But once they’re in, I want to implicate them in all of the grim, unsightly realities of what’s going on in our country. As they’re singing along, it’s like ‘What did he say? What am I chanting right now?’” - Mobley

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HEALTH have a new album of collaborations with suck folks as Soccer Mommy and JPEGMAFIA. The record drops Oct 16 2020 but the first single “Cyberpunk 2.0.2.0. is out now.

“In the past, each HEALTH LP has been accompanied by a corresponding remix record. This time, despite being called DISCO 4 in the interest of continuity, we offer you a collection of original collaborations with artists we admire. Also, FUCK 2020.”  - HEALTH

Buy the vinyl here ->

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"This song is about a wild night on the town filled with queer desire. It is an important song to us because it expresses a feeling we know is shared by many. There are a lot of songs out there about women’s bodies but this is the only song we know about big gay hands. This song is dedicated to the hotties and to those who love them." - Partner

Slowcity.ca Open Mic with the OBGMs, Bahamas, Hawksley Workman, Elvis Costello, A Family Curse, Mike Edel, Josh Tavares, Mike Block,

By Will McGuirk

Every now and then you get some new tunes you can just get behind, an introduction which causes one to declare Ooooo baby gimme more. . . we have a few today including this lead off track from the OBGMs which features a collab with TO rapper Clairmont the Second. The OBGMs’ debut album will be out Nov 30

Buy the vinyl here ->

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The saddest of the hunkiests, Bahamas, will release his latest album ‘Sad Hunk’ on Friday Oct 9 2020. Bahamas aka Afie Jurvanen has a new single, the very welcome “Trick to Happy.”

Buy the vinyl here ->

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Hawksley Workman · Dwindling Beauty (let's Fake Our Deaths Together)

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“This is a song about picking an argument with time, the very clock face, either running too fast or too slow, depending on the company you keep”. - Elvis Costello

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‘En Masse’ is the latest album from Mike Edel, his fourth, it will be available Nov 20, 2020 on Pennant.

“If I could co-write a song with Springsteen and The National, then put a bit of pixie dust on it, ‘Good About Everything’ is it. I co-wrote the song with two friends in San Diego after a night of eating ramen, riding around on scooters, getting denied from a capacity tiki bar, and after seeing some friends’ show. We ultimately decided to write about what a good night we had the night before.” - Mike Edel

Buy the vinyl here ->

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Slowcity.ca Open Mic with Mav Karlo, Peter Katz, Mo Kenney, The War and Treaty, The Zolas, The Flamingos Pink, Ant Saunders, and the Chairmen of the Boards

By Will McGuirk

When space becomes place, the mattering divides; the place-makers, the placed, the displaced, the misplaced - Lack of space they move to a new space, recently a digital space. Follow if only to steady, but to get ready move to a musical space. The acoustic space is all.

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Toronto singer-songwriter Mav Karlo (the solo project of Menno Versteeg, the founder of Royal Mountain Records), has shared his latest single and video, “Detonator”.

“Detonator" is about that moment when you stop saying to yourself “I’m such a fuck up” and start asking “why am I such a fuck up?” It’s a long and a hard process, but an important one, and that’s reflected in the wordier than usual verses. I wanted the detail in the lyrics to act like dots in a pointillist painting, disparate images that when taken together convey a singular emotion.” - Mav Karlo

Buy the vinyl here ->

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Singer/songwriter Peter Katz has a released a new track, “KMOTM” from his upcoming album, ‘City of Our Lives’ due to drop Nov. 25 2020. Its anew direction for Katz and well worth a listen.

peterkatzmusic · 05 KMOTM

“Part of what I wanted to do with this new music is not have it be just about my story. It’s in there – it’s all in there – but I don’t want to be that guy anymore. I think that my older approach to writing was about holding on rather than letting go. This music feels like letting go to me. And I hope that when people hear it, they can hear their own story in it too and that maybe it can help them feel like letting go.” - Peter Katz

Buy the vinyl here ->

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“When our relationship has no hurt and it just plain feels good, we start to question if it’s really real because everything that has been real to us has come wrapped in pain. We start imagining a world where it’s not too good to be true and that world is Hearts Town… Hearts Town is a place where you can come broken and open, regardless of your past and find love, just like we have.” - Michael Trotter (The War and Treaty)

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Slowcity.ca Open Mic with Kate Boothman, Jack De Keyzer, Matt Berninger, Austra, Sylvan Esso, Rhye, the Blue Stones, Figure Walking, Flara K,

By Will McGuirk

Kate Boothman, has released her latest single, the brightly breezy “My Next Mistake”. May be just what one needs to hear on this morning, scratch that, it is what you need to hear. Up and at them folks, up and at them.

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Blues guru Jack De Keyzer has a new album dropping Sept 15, 2020. "Titled “Tribute” this is Jack’s twelfth album and features twelve original tracks. The first single “Lets Do It” is now available with video by Steven Frank.

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Matt Berninger of The National will release his debut sole album, ‘Serpentine Prison’ on Oct 16 2020. The album will be on Book records/ Concord records. The first singe is “One More Second.” There’s a beauty tippy-tapp organ break provided by the legendary Booker T Jones, who also is the album producer.

“I wrote “One More Second” with Matt Sheehy (Lost Lander, EL VY) with the intention for it to be a kind of answer to Dolly Parton’s ‘I Will Always Love You’, or sort of the other side of that conversation. I just wanted to write one of those classic, simple, desperate love songs that sound great in your car”. - Matt Berninger

Buy the vinyl here ->

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Austra’s new album ‘ HiRUDiN’ is now out and available on Pink Fizz records. A remix for the track “Risk It” has been released. And its a banger!!

“India Jordan recently put out one of my favourite records in a while (complete with a very on point Tipping The Velvet reference) so I was very honoured they agreed to do this remix. The new track is sunny and euphoric and everything I dreamed it would be!” - Katie Stelmanis (Austra)

Buy the vinyl here ->

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Electro-pop duo Sylvan Esso have released “Frequency”, the third single from their new album, ‘Free Love’, coming out September 25, 2020, on Loma Vista Recordings. The song is accompanied by a new video directed and styled by Moses Sumney.

“We had a fantastic and rewarding time collaborating with our friend and fellow North Carolinian, Moses Sumney, on building a visual world for Frequency. He had such a beautiful vision for the project, one that ran parallel to the song's initial source in a way that showed us new spaces it could inhabit. It's a beautiful exploration of being together and apart at the same time – we feel it rings clearly in this moment.” - Sylvan Esso

Buy the vinyl here ->

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Buy the vinyl here ->

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Slowcity.ca Open Mic with Matthew Cardinal, Sameer Cash, Margo Price, Donovan Woods, Airliners, Yukon Blonde, Tucker Lane, and Rooks

By Will McGuirk

“Boy you’re gonna carry that weight a long time” sang four working class lads from Liverpool in hats from fifty years ago and they knew and fought forward, its tough to be tough. Its hard to be a hard man. We can’t crack, when we crack we break. We haven’t learnt to bend. . . yet, and yet . . .

“I would like it if people listened and interpreted the music anyway they want to. I don't think these songs need a narrative, and I think certain moods come through some of the tracks, while other moods might only be heard by individual listeners.” - Matthew Cardinal

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“‘Stay In Touch’ is about male friendship, and about how we as boys are not given the language to articulate pain or loss. . . Like when our friend lost his dad. Or when our form of a high school reunion was a funeral for one of our own. For those of us mourning the loss of innocence and the realization that the world was not made of us, for sensitive people who want the best for those around us. When we feel like we are not enough. When it gets too much, and when the money dries up, stay in touch with your mother, stay in touch with your high school band, stay in touch with me.” - Sameer Cash

Cash’s album ‘This City” will be released Friday, Sep. 11, 2020 on Postwar Records.

Order the vinyl here ->

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“To me the song is about, not only watching someone you love move on, but coming to terms with the realization that not only do you have to learn to let them go, but you have to be happy for them,” - Donovan Woods

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Airliners · Copenhagen

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Yukon Blonde have announced their fifth studio album, ‘Vindicator’ will be available on Nov. 13, 2020 on Dine Alone Records. Their new single “You Were Mine” is out now.

Preorder the vinyl here ->

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Slowcity.ca Open Mic with Jim Bryson, Oh Susanna, Andrea Nixon, Terra Lightfoot, Julia Stone, Speaker Face, Sigala +James Arthur,

By Will McGuirk

Today in the city a neighbourhood mourns a family shot dead. On the other side of town a young boy squeals with delight and rushes to greet his father coming home carrying a package of food from a mobile charity kitchen. This is a city with all its horror and all its hope.

“I heard the not so distant screams
That broke the silence of a summers eve
But Soon all those kids will leave
And we'll be here just listening, not listening.”

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“'Blind Spot’ asks listeners to consider their own blind spots, both when they have felt unseen and unheard, and all the diverse voices that are currently muted in popular culture.” - Andrea Nixon

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Speaker Face · Work Friends

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Oshawa bucks the trend with new music venues opening; Good news if the city handles it right

By Will McGuirk

When one door closes another opens. For the former operators of the recently shuttered Oshawa Music Hall those doors opened just one block north at 44 Bond St. in Downtown Oshawa. 

Maggie Maybe and her hubbie Ed have partnered with Nick Diachenko and Sacco Group Property Management to covert the former Local 222 Union Hall and onetime LazerQuest and Dungeon building into a three floor entertainment centre featuring a restaurant, a 1200 capacity concert hall, and, in good news for an entire generation of music fans in Durham Region who have very fond memories of the Dungeon, (the all-ages party central where acts such as Lindsey Schoolcraft, Chastity and Protest The Hero cut their teeth), a 250 capacity club in the basement.

The former Oshawa Music Hall building has also changed owners so now, as venues are closing worldwide due to the Covid-19 pandemic, there are several entrepreneurs who have chosen to take the opposite approach and instead invest in the cultural sector of this city’s economy and its vast and vibrant, if furloughed, music community

Add these new two enterprises to the existing two, the Regent Theatre and the Tribute Communities Centre, then add on the smaller venues such as the Atria, plus the pubs and cafes, plus the possibility of a venue at 71 King, the former Genosh Hotel, and then add in all the outdoor patio activity if this pandemic means more outside activities, - got all that, ok now, if all are operational on the same night, do the math.

1200 plus 250 plus 600 plus 5000 plus another thousand or so and you get?

Yes, exactly - the sum of noise complaints from the many residents moving into the many condos being built, or about to be built in the core, on, you guessed it, Bond Street

People like living near a club on the weekend but not so much on a Tuesday night. This was an issue for the Velvet Elvis.  Although located on King St., the bar backed onto a residential neighbourhood and the noise complaints were constant. The Elvis had maybe a dozen people on any given night on its back patio.

Maggie, Ed and Nick have already built those concerns into their plan. The Sacco Group own the block 44 Bond is located on so the space between them and their neighbours should dissipate any sound issues sufficiently. Sufficient baffling will be built on to the back walls. That may well be enough but there will be other problems and we should take the time to get to know them.

Some people buy next to an airport but don’t want the airport to expand and increase flights. Some folks like to live near a university until their neighbour’s property becomes a frat house. Some like when they can visit parents at Carriage House on Bond and go see a show after but not so much when they can’t find parking because there are band trucks lined up right round the block. The city supports culture, it says but they have ticketed those same trucks in the past for blocking snow removal.

Both the old Oshawa Music Hall and the potentially new Oshawa Music Hall have vision. They are actively taking a risk, but they are also taking their time and the time to get things right, readying for the time when bands will tour and concerts will once again become part of our usual routine.

City Council and, both the Economic Development Office and the Culture Counts Office, could also be using this time to do their own risk management study and to reassess their approach to the night economy, to move from ignorance to celebration. 

They could be using this time to reach out to these believers in our city’s potential to get ahead of any potential barriers to their success; Council and staff could do so by revisiting noise and overnight parking bylaws, by removing the one ways streets on Bond and King, by converting Ontario Street and Athol Street to pedestrian only, by encouraging the Holiday Inn downtown to offer accommodation for touring musicians and their crew at discounted prices, by ensuring all buyers and builders of condominiums downtown are aware of, and willing to accept both the advantages and the disadvantages of living in a culturally rich and diverse downtown, a 24/7 downtown.

City Council has agreed to spend quite a lot of money to bid for a one off hockey tournament which would see a couple of days economic bump in downtown activity. Good, great, yay sports. But music is every day, every night, year after year after year. I would hope Council can see fit to spend a fraction of that figure on looking at creating a formal music policy for the city at large, with a focus on the downtown core, which has been for a decade or more the dedicated entertainment district in the city’s development plans as well as the Culture Counts plan.

Covid-19 recovery will require heavy lifting from all sectors. A music policy would ensure the culture sector is part of the recovery. The City has the opportunity to create one now before everything reopens again. With one in place Oshawa can welcome these night economy investors with open arms and minds and not with a parking ticket parade and a bylaw officers guard of honour. 

Slowcity.ca with Satellite and the Harpoon, Yves Jarvis, Jeremy Drury, The Elwins, Austra, Hen Ogledd,

By Will McGuirk

Saint Etienne took on the heartache aware no doubt Uncle Neil’s lullaby can spin off into maudlin chaos in the wrong voice however here the Satellite and the Harpoon both get it done.

The track is on the EP ‘Satellite’ available for download on Sept 4.

“. . ..so this is our run at this classic, not planned, definitely not rehearsed, just childhood dreams being chased,”

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The latest release by Yves Jarvis, ‘Sundry Rock Song Stock’ will be available on vinyl Nov 13.

“When you better yourself, you better the world. Even if you only interact with one person in your life, the effect of trying to see things for what they are is vast. Change can feel like a fantasy, but I’m not fatalistic about it. I make music because I get results that way. It’s why I promote creativity, whatever that means for anyone.” - Yves Jarvis

But the vinyl here ->

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Jeremy Drury of The Strumbellas has released his debut solo album, ‘Company Store’

“Reflecting on world events and global movements over the past few months has been a very enlightening, challenging, and inspirational experience for me. Recognizing the opportunities provided to me through good people being selfless, my benefit from the generosity, charity, support, and encouragement from my communities have shaped who I am as a person. A person who now finds themselves in a unique position, a person interested in helping provide some of the opportunities I've been afforded, to others.

Inspired both by those who came before me and those currently redefining what "business as usual" means, I've decided to donate 100% of proceeds from the first month's sales and streaming revenues from my first album "Company Store", to the following charities:

MusiCounts, Nia Centre for the Arts, The Gord Downie & Chanie Wenjack Fund, and Canadian Music Therapy Fund.

I believe music and the arts have the power to heal. To inspire. To bring us closer together. I believe these organizations represent a broad cross-section of that kind of positivity being fostered in our communities. “ - Jeremy Drury

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The Elwins, from Newmarket ON, will release their fourth Long Player, titled IV, out October 23, 2020.

‘the swimming feeling of getting lost thinking about the complexities of life’. - press release

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Austra’s new album HiRUDiN is now available as is a remix of “I Am Not Waiting” by Shura.

"Shura has dreamed up a lush, hazy rework of my track, a sonic palette that's so pleasing to listen to, I want to melt away every time I hear it." - Austra

Buy the vinyl here ->

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Hen Ogledd will release their new album ‘Free Humans’ on Sept 25 via Weird World.

“‘Crimson Star’ is a gentle, pungent pop song about a retired entertainer looking back on their adventures during the heyday of space tourism.” - Richard Dawson

Buy the vinyl here ->

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"Get It Back" is “a song that touches on seeking constant self-validation and the attempt to channel these emotions through fantasy,” - Heaps

"What Went Wrong' - Slowcity Open Mic with Monica Lee, Jyoti, the Avett Brothers, Ruston Kelly, Close Talker, Elvis Costello,

By Will McGuirk

Change is gonna come some day, (comes quicker if we push for it). Anyone else spending long hours contemplating direction, purpose, intent. . . The disparity between people’s income and the despair of outcomes, and how much change can we spare when so much is needed.

Vancouver singer/songwriter Monica Lee is. She will use the next Bandcamp Friday (Sept. 4) to donate sales of her latest single "What Went Wrong" to the Vancouver Downtown Eastside Women's Centre.

The Downtown Eastside Women's Centre provides practical support to over 500 women, children and seniors every day, as well as offering a refuge and shelter from conditions of poverty and violence.  The Centre provides basic necessities like hot meals, free clothing, secure mailing addresses, phone and computer access, functioning and secure toilets and showers.  They also help reduce the effect of economic disadvantage by providing toiletries, feminine hygiene products, computer access, harm reduction supplies and first aid.

"The Centre assists women with their immediate and crisis needs so they can develop stability and access the resources they need to improve health, family, employment and housing situations. They promote positive change by offering individual long-term support, education, advocacy, peer mentorship and exposure to alternatives. I'm proud to donate all Bandcamp sales on Friday Sept. 4, purchases that will go towards helping women in need." - Monica Lee

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The third album from Grammy-nominated singer, songwriter, producer, and multi-instrumentalist, Georgia Anne Muldrow’s solo-jazz project, Jyoti, ‘Mama, You Can Bet!’ is now available via eOne and SomeOthaShip. Listen to the Afropunk Soundcheck interview.

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The Avett Brothers will release ‘The Third Gleam’ on vinyl September 18.
Buy the vinyl here ->

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Singer, songwriter and musician, Ruston Kelly’s new album, ‘Shape & Destroy’ is out on Rounder Records.

“Making this record definitely taught me that I don’t want to be selfish: I want to channel something larger than myself and give myself to the process as fully as possible, because these songs also become the story of whoever hears them. Whatever someone might get out of listening to this record and hearing me express myself in this way, it’s completely theirs.”

Buy the vinyl here ->

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Close Talker have released the deluxe version of ‘How Do We Stay Here?’ . Its available on Slow Weather, and features five new songs including new single “Counterpart.”

“Counterpart” stems from “the loss of a relationship a friend of ours experienced a few years ago and the low feelings that followed,” the band says. “It’s about struggling to come to terms with those feelings, knowing you’ll be living in them for a while. Although a lot of our songs have some somber undertones, this one really doesn’t beat around the bush and is probably the saddest song we’ve written.”

Buy the vinyl here ->

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Elvis Costello will release his latest album, ‘Hey Clockface’ on October 30.

“They’re draping stones with colours and a roll of stolen names except those we never cared about and those we need to blame”

Buy the vinyl here ->

'Girls Like Me' - Grease meets grass on Meghan Patrick's new single

By Will McGuirk

“Girls Like Me” from the Bowmanville-to-Nashville star Meghan Patrick features a NASCAR theme in the video but country and cars is not just American, its a Canadian thing too, and a Clarington thing. Thats no surprise for Patrick who grew up with Mosport purrings in the air on many a summer night. The track has a Copperhead Road feel to it and I’ll drop that in here too. Because why not.

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Slowcity.ca Open Mic with Arkells, Sameer Cash, summersets, Krief, Le Couleur, LAL, Sam Roberts Band, METZ, and the Happy Fits

By Will McGuirk

Its time I think for all of us to take a breath. Its been one hell of a year. Although we collectively hit the pause button back in Spring its still been go go go, an incessant propulsive hammering of dread, and with the country opening up, schools back and bubbles enlarged that sense of dread is amplified. I miss festivals. I go annually to rejuvenate my soul. I need it, I need trees and water and dirt and campfires at dusk and sky, so much sky. But there are trees in my yard and sky between the buildings in my city and water a drive away so I have been getting my festival vibes in fragments but still getting them. So do yourself a favour, grab some campfire vibes, go small, go slow, choose time, choose tunes, where ever you can, however you can, find a moment; outside, away from it all, remove the mask and breathe in deeply. As deeply as you can, feel it as deeply as you can, fill your boots. . . , pause. . . , and then strap on the mask and get back in the fight.

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“I kept trying to find ways of communicating this illusive feeling that seems to plague my generation. This access to everything, but the need for nothing – it manifests itself in all aspects of our lives, from relationships, to the internet.” - Sameer Cash

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summersets, photo by Brittany Lucas

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“As we took this journey without the noise, the people, and the parties in our warehouse apartment, along with the constant grind outside, I found beauty in the stillness of our block.” - LAL

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"Essentially, in my mind, it comes back to the need for some light. A way forward. To shine some kind of bright light on the future, the path that we’re walking and not giving in to despair," - Sam Roberts

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Beatrice Street in Oshawa winds it way through new Dizzy single

By Will McGuirk

Well if you can’t beat them join them. . . Dizzy make the best of being in this enforced world of bubbles and make art from the lockdown. From inside the infinity of the mirrored looking glass the four piece perform their new single, “Beatrice” from their new and fine album, ‘The Sun and Her Scorch’.

Interview with Mike Scott, Waterboys on the occasion of the release of "Good Luck, Seeker'

“And I believe in love. To me, that’s the engine that powers the universe and the moments when we feel truly connected are the moments when we feel love; when we come into harmony with the soul of the universe. ”

By Will McGuirk

Sometimes you only get a short time with folks you want to chat a lifetime with. One such is musician, the Waterboy himself, Mike Scott. We had email contact for his new album, ‘Good Luck, Seeker’ dropping Aug 21, 2020, but Scott is a fascinating character and deserves so much more recognition beyond a couple of chart singles back in the 1980s - the “Whole of the Moon”, “Fisherman’s Blues”, etc. His concept of Big Music back then was quaint in its pop-timism but now decades later is so on point, is so whole of the moon, so whole of the sun too, plus planets, galaxies, universe, universes, the whole of the whole of it. He sang then and sings still of the whole of the whole of it. And with an all encompassing music which sings to the voice of the people of this entire planet, a music at once indigenous and spiritual and unknown and resonant and familiar, that sings to the collective soul of humans and human history, a common gathering voice, - he explores a sound which creates a space, which is a place where all of it is home, where all of is present and all of it is always present and with a hook which makes it human, oh so human. Mike Scott had an epiphany and it has informed his whole being.  And here we are in 2020 and season upon season of global sounds; balcony operas, street level violins and clanking tins and front step sing-a-longs for front-line workers, waves of sounds crashing into each others, the disharmony of voices, finding each other, embracing, harmonizing, becoming one huge wave, a vibration to challenge a virus and as long as one voice can speak, as long as one voice can sing, then the Big Music endures, the human enterprise will endure even as we head into the final seasons with all of their mythical resonance. The Big Music is the Big Hope and right now we need big hope, oh how we need big hope!

Slowcity.ca: You have been doing this a long time, why did you start and what are your thoughts on being able to pursue this very personal path for so long?

Mike Scott: “Music is my life. From the age of 9 I wanted to live inside songs, write 'em, record 'em and perform 'em. That's never changed.”

SC: I feel you explore similar territory to Nick Cave, the very rich history of art both traditional and contrived; whereas Cave has delved into the darkness you have a lighter step, a more optimistic, brighter treatment. Where does this come from and why is there so much joy in your music and songs?

MS: “I don't know where it comes from but you are right. It is there. My early awareness came from my reading, writers like CS Lewis whose fiction I found very inspiring, and from my favourite music. And I was a child of the 60s, that inspirational decade when everything was possible. Later I found that it's up to the individual to find their path, and that everything is still possible, but we have to make it happen ourselves and not wait for society or the culture to do it.  And I believe in love. To me, that's the engine that powers the universe and the moments when we feel truly connected are the moments when we feel love; when we come into harmony with the soul of the universe. I can go to dark places in my songs, and even have some fun there, but I will never stay. If there is one keynote in Waterboys music, I think it is a sonic/lyrical reassurance that love is the secret and everything is gonna be all right in the end. I've had personal experiences of spiritual oneness that have proven this and though I come back down from them, sometimes for years, I never forget what I've seen and understood. “

SC: The traditional culture of a place is important it seems to your music but you marry it with the modern. How has it been living through the deep changes Ireland has undergone  and how has it affected your music or is there an inherent sameness in the culture you have been able to draw upon? To reference Yeats whom you covered - is Romantic Ireland dead and gone?

MS: “I delved into Yeats for the ‘Appointment With Mr Yeats’ album, and I live and work and write in Ireland, but I am not so deeply connected to Ireland's spiritual karma. I'm not Catholic, wasn't brought up Catholic (or religious at all in that sense), and Ireland's emergence from oppressive Catholicism isn't my story, though I empathise with it and have felt deeply angry when revelations (like the Ryan Report) came out.  Recently my daughter's school, which is non-denominational, held its Christmas choir event in a Catholic church. I was dismayed by the opulence it contained, and couldn't square that with the centuries of cruelty, the tearing of babies from their mothers, the paedophilia and abuse. I walked out.”

SC: The press release provided says this album is the final piece of a triptych - Did you plan on making three albums in this way, how did you order the songs as they came to you, and what are the themes to each and the common narrative of all three?

MS: “No. It's just the way it happened.  Nothing is planned except that ‘Out Of All This Blue’ would be a double. The next two albums were almost accidental! There is no common lyrical narrative but there is a musical thread, with everything arising from my mashing up of beats and band music for the last 6 or 7 years.  The next album will be quite different (already finished).”

SC: The album title suggests you are staying put and waving on another; How has your own seeking gone, have you found as someone one sang what you were looking for? And what was it, for after all a quest without a prize is just a walk, to quote another?

MS: “I've heard the big music, Dude, and I'll never be the same.”