ALL THESE GREAT ANSWERS - BONUS EDITION
As a little extra treat - here’s recent Q+A’s with Matt Finucane and Joy Shannon!
Matt Finucane
(Photo by Charlotte Horton)
What’re your highlights of the year so far? Having my EP released on Eyeless Records and playing a successful launch gig. I’d almost given up hope of someone taking a chance on me like that again, so it felt really good. Matt Finucane (vocals, guitars).
What are your goals for the rest of the year? It’s nearly over, and it’s been a super-intense year of crazy highs and lows which almost killed me. I’m happy to be alive, so I plan to relax, practice gratitude and maybe take ayahuasca for a third time since January.
Which new bands/artists are you into right now? Nancy Cancer, Nil By Habit, Fae As Folk.
What was the band or artist that got you into music or inspired you to be a musician? It’s all The Velvet Underground’s fault.
AI has become a bone of contention among creators. What’s your view of it? I think it’s like a nice warm cup of liquidised cat shit. The music it makes is always a bit off somehow, and usually tiresome not-funny comedy bollocks, but just acceptable enough that morons love it. And of course in a year or less it’ll sound better, by which I mean worse.
How best do you write; in a jam room or a studio? I have no fixed approach – it’s good to try everything. Some of my best stuff comes from sleep deprivation, or otherwise allowing the unconscious its voice. (AI has no unconscious, that’s why it sucks.)
What was your wildest show so far, and why? They’re all wild these days. The older and more undignified I get, the more raucous the shows. I honestly hope to die of a heart attack onstage – a good, clean, quick death.
What inspired the lyrical themes behind your new record? Isolation, mental disturbance, and the ghosts and shadows of the past: exorcising them through loud guitars and psychodrama.
What’s the story behind the artwork? I did it during a real low point when I was depressed about a situationship gone bad – frankly I’m amazed I could function at all. MF
Where is the furthest across the globe you’ve played so far? Scotland (Inverness to be exact, played Glasgow 2-3 times too). If anywhere else wants me, I’m game.
Joy Shannon
What’re your highlights of the year so far?
Joy Shannon-
Truly the biggest highlights of this year, and creating this album have been the creative collaborations I have done for the songs, from the music videos I created with director Matt Kollar to working with the guest artists on the album like Kai Uwe Faust from Heilung, Emily Jane White, Osi and the Jupiter, Jessica Way from Worm Ouroboros, Leila Abdul-Rauf, Aerial Ruin, Justin Fox from Fox and the Red Hares, multi-instrumentalist Syd Lewis, singer Amelia Barron, and my producers Greg Chandler and Dan Malsch.
This year one of the most amazing parts of creating my new album was recording with Kai Uwe Faust from Heilung. It was truly a magical moment. He came to my home during a sudden and severe rainstorm, which seemed very fitting. He and I have been friends since about 2014 and we have talked about creating a song together, but had not gotten a chance to do it until now. Kai is a force of nature and brought so much energy to the album, like a deluge of blessings.
What are your goals for 2025?
This has been a big year and album release for me, as the album was about 4 years of work. So my main goal for 2025, is to keep promoting the music, with shows, music videos and more collaborations. I will start writing the next album too, along with working with my music video director on more film projects.
Which new bands/artists are you into right now?
I am always inspired by Heilung, as their shows are just such inspiring, cathartic rituals. I also just saw Opeth perform and they put on such a beautiful and epic show. I love the Irish band Lankum, as they perform such intriguing dark Irish folk music. It feels like it has the heaviness of all of Irish history behind it.
What was the band or artist that got you into music or inspired you to be a musician?
The two main artists that really inspired me as a young kid were Gavin Friday (and his band the Virgin Prunes) and Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds.
Gavin Friday just released an amazing new album as well. He was the first band I ever saw live. Even though I grew up mostly in California, I am Irish and my family is from Tullamore. I was sort of between the two cultures, and felt different from the conservative Irish people I was growing up around. So Gavin Friday was very inspiring, because he is Irish and is so avant-garde.
Seeing Gavin Friday’s fantastical and elegant way of creative expression really inspired me. I was only 12 when I went to see him perform at a club in Los Angeles. I think back on it now and think how insane it was that my parents let me go to West Hollywood at that age to see the show with friends. We also had to ask the club owner to let us in, as it was restricted to 21 and older, but bless him, he did! A drag queen walked by when we were speaking with him and said “she has great shoes, let her in.”
Nick Cave was the other songwriter who inspired me as a young kid. I dissected his lyrics and songwriting structures and fell in love with how he told a story through song and performance.
I think to this day, I am still striving to be as skillful and soulful as Gavin Friday and Nick Cave, but in my own way, of course.
AI has become a bone of contention among creators. What’s your view of it?
I am a slow adapter of technology, as I am someone who plays acoustic instruments like harp, cello and sings. I know that AI can be used as a tool, like any technology, with music or other creative fields. But since I am inspired by the ancient world when I am writing songs, I tend to stick to the instruments I can physically play myself. I am most attracted to human made art, as I like the authentic realness to it.
What inspired the lyrical themes behind your new record, An Chailleach?
“An Chailleach” is inspired by the ancient Irish crone goddess, who rules over the dark times of the year. She is a goddess that embodies both destruction and death and creation and rebirth, like how winter storms, make way for the beauty of spring. I began writing songs about her during 2020, when the world was in such a strange place of uncertainty. In my research about her, she became a reassuring presence for me, that, even in strange and confusing times of darkness, all is in step with the cycles of the world.
Over the course of about 4 years, I wrote these songs, while traveling to some of the ancient sites in Ireland associated with the goddess “An Chailleach”. What emerged was a sort of meditation, through the themes of Irish goddesses, on love, grief and faith in rebirth. I wrote in a mix of both English and Irish lyrics, as I delved deeper into the Irish language and my ancestral history.
For me, connecting to the stories of ancient Irish goddesses, has felt like an important part in helping to heal the wounds, especially inflicted upon women in my ancestral line. One of the songs that really captures the themes of the album is “The Crone of Loughcrew”. I wrote that about an ancient Irish site called Loughcrew, that is devoted to “An Chailleach”, but it overlooks a Magdalene Laundry where my grandmother was once imprisoned for being pregnant with my father out of wedlock. Those institutions were places of horrendous abuses to women, and yet, this was a land that once revered the goddess, and in fact her ancient site was in view of this terrible place. So I felt like connecting with this site and this goddess, helped to heal some of the wounds of my own family line. My lyrics in that song are “I dream of when the gods were women and it was to a sin, to be me.”
Our current world is so out of balance with how we treated women and the earth, that I feel there is incredible opportunity to heal and expand our consciousnesses, when we connect back into the ancient sites around the world, that revere nature and goddesses. In these sites, our ancestors left us these wonderful opportunities to learn from them and heal ourselves.
What’s the story behind the artwork?
The album cover was created by the amazing Irish artist Sean Fitzgerald. He illustrated his vision of “An Chailleach” sitting upon the megalithic site of Loughcrew. She sits upon the stone called the Hag’s Stone, carved with spirals by ancient hands. The illustration is surrounded by the phases of the moon and the crone has given birth to a baby, all to referring to the cycles of death and rebirth, in constant flow around us. This artwork perfectly illustrates the themes of the albums: the ancient mysteries I was dreaming about when I wrote the songs.
Joy has also released the video for ‘Corr Bán (Tar Árais Dom)’, a collabration with Kai Uwe Faust from Heilung: