Latest news with #Villagers
Irish Independent
14-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Irish Independent
Award winning Kerry pub one of just 33 venues to receive funding under support scheme
The funding, which was announced on Thursday June 12 by Minister for Culture, Communications and Sport, Patrick O'Donovan, totals €500,000 and this will be used in providing in funding to assist small, established grassroots music venues to showcase the talent of emerging musicians across Ireland. A total of 33 venues have been offered funding of up to €15,000 from the Night-Time Economy Grassroots Music Venues Support Scheme to support the continued programming of early-career musicians. Applications were received from a wide range of late-night venues including pubs, nightclubs and theatres. Venues in many rural towns and villages are being supported, with funding awarded to 16 venues outside of our major cities. Following the announcement of the Scheme in March 2025, there was a high level of interest in this pilot scheme, with nearly 100 applications submitted before the scheme was closed. Those approved for funding met the scheme's eligibility criteria, which included a requirement to demonstrate evidence of a strong track record of regularly holding ticketed grassroots music events, showcasing emerging artists performing original music, spanning the years 2023-2024. It's set to be a busy few months once more in the Listowel pub with a number of big name acts set to come to town. Upcoming performances by Villagers and Kerry's very own Lorraine Nash are completely sold out while The Riptide Movement have just been announced to play there on the night of October 24. Tralee's Seamus Harty meanwhile will play there on August 7. A full line up of what's on there in the coming months is available over on the bar's website where tickets can also be bought.
RTÉ News
13-06-2025
- Entertainment
- RTÉ News
The Summer of CMAT - how Ireland's gobbiest pop star conquered the music world
It's out with the cigs, the Bic lighters, the "strappy white tops with no bra" and all the other garish lime green accoutrements; time to drag out the cowboy hats and boots, tooth jewels and brightly coloured tights from storage. 2024 may have been 'Brat Summer' thanks to Charli XCX, but there's a new pop hero in town: 2025 is shaping up to be the Summer of CMAT. How did a young musician from Ireland become the kind of performer that can play to tens of thousands of fans (as she did last week), encouraging them to do the 'Dunboyne, County Meath two-step" at Primavera Sound? Barcelona has never seen the likes - but if anyone can achieve such a feat, it's Ciara Mary Alice Thompson. The 29-year-old musician's rise has been a slow but steady one over the last five years. Considering she launched herself as a solo artist at the same time as a pandemic - which gave her little to no opportunity to promote her debut single Another Day (KFC) - she's doubly defied the odds. I remember interviewing her around the time that that song (a heartache-addled tune inspired by her debit card failing in KFC after being dumped) began to gain traction. "I feel if you make the song good enough, structurally and sonically, then you can literally do whatever you want with the lyrics," she said. "I also find that if you make a song really funny, you also free up a lot of space to talk about serious issues without coming across as po-faced. I think a lot of people, when they write a song, they put it on a pedestal – and it shouldn't be. Music should not be that serious, it should not be treated as such a high art form – because a lot of the time, it's not." Even in those early days - although she had previous experience in the industry as one-half of indie duo The Bad Sea - CMAT's vision was striking. She was referring to herself as a 'global pop star' long before anyone else did, but she also had the musical chops to go with the self-confidence. It was clear that she was an artist who knew her onions, speaking about influenced by Dory Previn and the McGarrigle sisters as well as Villagers, and writing songs about people like comedian Rodney Dangerfield and actor Peter Bogdanovich - figures that most of her fellow Gen Z brethren would be baffled by. Despite her prowess on record, it's arguably CMAT's dogged touring schedule and her reputation as an outstanding live performer that has been key to spreading her gospel. She was also a journalist's dream: an interviewee eschewing the bland media-trained responses of her young peers and unafraid to speak her mind. It's something that she has continued to do to this day. In a recent interview with The Guardian newspaper - which referred to her as "pop's gobbiest, gaudiest star", she spoke about the fallout from cancelling her set at last year's Latitude festival due to its sponsorship by Barclays. "They ghosted me," she said of a planned endorsement deal with a big brand that fell through. "I lost a lot of money. But who f**king cares? I'm aware of the fact that my career is going to struggle as a result of this stuff, but I also think everyone else in music needs a kick up the hole. Where's all the f**king artists? Where's all the f**king hippies?" Listen: CMAT introduces her favourite songs for RTÉ Radio 1's Mixtape Born in Cedarwood Avenue, a subsequent move to Clonee and then the aforementioned Dunboyne saw her spend her teenage years languishing in suburbia and honing her songcraft. In her early days as a solo artist, following brief spells living in Denmark and Manchester and after the break-up of The Bad Sea, she used an out-of-hours yoga studio on Camden Street as a makeshift rehearsal and recording studio, sharing it with fellow artists Aoife Nessa Frances and Rachael Lavelle as she worked a humdrum day job. Her 2022 debut album If My Wife New I'd Be Dead made her a star in Ireland, thanks to hits like the country-pop-infused I Wanna Be a Cowboy, Baby!, but it was 2023's Crazymad, for Me album that made international audiences sit up and take notice. High profile appearances on the BBC's Later with Jools Holland and The Graham Norton Show, as well as radio hits like the wistful pop rollick of Stay for Something, saw her plant her flag on UK territory. Suddenly, there were BRIT Award nominations (including a red carpet kerfuffle with that fabulous bum-baring dress); Robbie Williams was calling her duet with John Grand 'majestic', and Elton John himself was heaping praise on the album, calling it "All the things I love… bold, eccentric and a touch mad!" Despite her prowess on record, it's arguably CMAT's dogged touring schedule and her reputation as an outstanding live performer that has been key to spreading her gospel. Her 5-star homecoming gigs at Dublin's Olympia Theatre in November 2023 were the real signifier that something special was happening. Here we had not only a woman who could write pop bangers with emotional depth, but who knew, alongside her excellent band, how to entertain an audience. In simple terms, she had star quality - and a forthcoming sold-out 3Arena gig this December to prove it. Fame, of course, has not been without its pitfalls. In true CMAT style, however, she has spun at least one of them into something positive with her new single Take a Sexy Picture of Me - a song written in response to the online trolling she has had in response to her body - and it's even spawned its own TikTok dance. The Apple Dance? That was so last year, babe. On his recent appearance on Louis Theroux's podcast, Ed Sheeran said that you need three things you need to succeed - work ethic, personality and talent - and if you have the first two, the third doesn't quite matter as much. CMAT possesses all three in abundance, so who knows where she might land with her forthcoming third album Euro-Country. She has, by her own admission, been living life on the edge in recent times: "The kind of headspace that good songs come from is one of extreme emotion, extreme depth of feeling," she said, "which has an impact on my life. I do live in that really heightened state of emotion all the time. I'm crazy and I do crazy things, and I have crazy relationships with people." Hopefully she's savvy enough to recognise when it might be time to step back from the madness. For now, at least, we can relish the Summer of CMAT. Giddy up.
Extra.ie
12-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Extra.ie
Villagers announced as headliners at major Irish festival
Villagers are set to headline the upcoming Hibernacle Festival, set to take place from July 4-6 at Orlagh House in Rathfarnham, Dublin. The three-day music and arts gathering recently announced its second wave of programming, featuring a blend of established artists, rising talent and immersive experiences. Led by songwriter Conor OBrien, Villagers will perform a special acoustic set at the festival. The performance comes on the heels of OBriens sixth studio album, That Golden Time , released in 2023. The festival's current lineup includes a diverse range of Irish artists such as Pillow Queens, Lisa Hannigan, Ye Vagabonds, Wallis Bird, Jape, Ailbhe Reddy, Grinne Hunt, ine Tyrrell, George Murphy & Players and DJ Sally Cinnamon. Additional secret guests and collaborative performances are expected to be announced closer to the event. New additions to the weekends programme include late-night 'Sitting Room Sessions' in Orlagh Houses drawing room, featuring traditional ballads and singalongs led by George Murphy & Players. DJ Sally Cinnamon will curate nightly sets in the main indoor hall, spinning indie, soul, disco and electronic music. View this post on Instagram A post shared by The Old Orchard Inn 🍏🍎 (@theoldorchardinn) The festival will also feature 'Secret Garden Sessions' and pop-up performances across the estate grounds. Belfast-based artist Dani Larkin is among the confirmed performers, along with emerging acts such as Were Not Together and Ballymun singer-songwriter Eddie Winston. Beyond music, Hibernacle will offer spoken word performances, including a reading by poet Emmet OBrien. 'Whisht: A Quiet Gathering,' curated by Deirdre Creasey, will provide a reflective space in Orlaghs gardens for movement and mindfulness practices. For more information on line-up and tickets click here.
Irish Times
31-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Irish Times
Event Guide: Forbidden Fruit, Swell Season and the other best things to do in Ireland this week
Event of the week Borris House Festival of Writing and Ideas Friday-Sunday, June 6th-8th, Borris, Co Carlow, €265/€94/€70, all events sold out (returns only), The words 'all events sold out' rarely apply to festivals where most of guests are writers, academics, journalists, cognitive psychologists, record producers, musicians and actors. This annual gathering shatters the perception that literary events are niche. The line-up is weighty, to say the least, with the likes of Fiona Shaw, Margaret Drabble, Steven Pinker, Rupert Everett, Elaine Feeney, John Banville and Denise Gough chatting across the weekend to anyone who will listen. Music in the onsite venue (aka the Rookery) includes performances by Villagers, Glen Hansard, Kate Ellis, Martin Hayes, MayKay and Jerry Fish. Gigs Morrissey Saturday, May 31st, 3Arena, Dublin, 6.30pm, €68.70, Morrissey celebrated his 66th birthday last week, so we can presume he will continue to write songs that are based, according to his biographer Johnny Rogan, on 'endlessly re-examining a lost, painful past'. Whether or not that's true, the contentious singer-songwriter arrives in Ireland on the back of nine postponed US shows (caused by severe sinusitis) and two unreleased albums (Bonfire of Teenagers and Without Music the World Dies). As ever, fan loyalty remains high. Forbidden Fruit Saturday and Sunday, May 31st and June 1st, Royal Hospital Kilmainham, Dublin, 1pm, €174/€99/€89, Forbidden Fruit: Jazzy The first open-air festival of the summer returns with two days of contemporary techno, soul, neojazz, electronic, pop, rock and the proverbial whatever you're having yourself. Audience favourites include Jamie xx, Underworld, Caribou, Jazzy and Peggy Gou. Emerging music acts that might be unfamiliar to Irish gig-goers include two treasures from Australia, Mail Grab and Glass Beams, and two acts making their Irish debut, New York's Fcukers and Germany's Bunt. Kudos to the promoters, also, for featuring up-and-coming Irish acts such as Pastiche, Shiv, Negro Impacto, Celaviedmai, KhakiKid, Cliffords and Bold Love. The Swell Season Saturday and Sunday, May 31st and June 1st, NCH, Dublin, 7.30pm, €55, The Swell Season Almost 20 years after they formed as The Swell Season and then appeared as two struggling musicians in John Carney's charming lo-fi movie Once, Glen Hansard and Markéta Irglová reunite for a European and US tour in support of their forthcoming album, Forward, their first album as a duo in 16 years. Expect to hear new material, then, but also the songs that started it all, including Falling Slowly, When Your Mind's Made Up, and This Low. READ MORE Galway Folk Festival Wednesday-Sunday, June 4th-8th, Monroe's, Galway city, various times/prices, Galway Folk Festival: The Scratch Another round of applause for the Galway Folk Festival, which manages to secure the services of not only noted singer-songwriters but also handfuls of emerging folk/trad/hybrid music acts. Most are performing in various rooms, corners, nooks and crannies of Monroe's pub, so if you're looking for a quiet beverage, best think again. If, however, you're in search of acts that deliver classic songwriting (Lloyd Cole, Wednesday, June 4th, Town Hall, 7.30pm, €40), boisterous behaviour (The Scratch, Friday, June 6th, 9pm, sold out), quality musicianship (Kíla, Saturday, June 7th, 7pm, €25), and rigorous confessions (Martha Wainwright, Sunday, June 8th, 7pm, €35), then you've come to the right place. Many free events are also included in the festival line-up. Stage The Cave Friday, June 6th until Friday, July 18th, Abbey Theatre, Dublin, 7.30pm, €50/€45/€33, Any new work by Kevin Barry is worth your attention, and his new play (which receives its world premiere here) is no exception. The brothers McRae, Archie (Tommy Tiernan) and Bopper (Aaron Monaghan) are on the run from the authorities and roughing it in a cave in the mountains of south Co Sligo. They fret about the strength of wifi signals, obsess about an obscure Mexican celebrity, and worry about being discovered by a curious local Garda sergeant (Judith Roddy). Caitríona McLaughlin directs. Following the Dublin run, the play will transfer to Galway's Town Hall Theatre, from Tuesday, July 22nd, until Saturday, July 26th, as part of the Galway International Arts Festival. Falling to Earth – My Summer with Bowie Wednesday and Thursday, June 4th and 5th, Theatre Royal, Waterford, 8pm, €21, ; Friday, June 6th, Everyman, Cork, 8pm, €26, Be careful what you wish for, and other associated hopes might be the core message of this acclaimed one-man show about pub bouncer Scut Kelly (Stephen Jones), whose sole comfort in an otherwise drab, rural existence is the music of the titular songwriter. Also, Saturday, June 7th, Axis, Ballymun, Wednesday June 11th, Civic Theatre, Tallaght, Thursday, June 12th/Friday, June 13th, DLR Mill Theatre, Dundrum (all Dublin); Saturday, June 14th, Mermaid Arts Centre, Bray, Co Wicklow; from Thursday, June 19th until Saturday, June 21st, Lyric Theatre, Belfast. See venues for full details. Comedy Solve-Along-A Murder-She-Wrote Tuesday and Wednesday, June 3rd and 4th, Pavilion Theatre, Dún Laoghaire, Co Dublin, 8pm, €25, Murder, She Wrote poster, from Tony Clayton-Lea for The Guide, Saturday, May 31, 2025. Making its debut at the Pavilion, this successful cult comedy stage show features an interactive screening of Sing a Song of Murder, a much-favoured episode of the television mystery series Murder, She Wrote. Accompanied by a series-related quiz and a race against time to uncover the identity of the TV show's killer, audience participation is welcome if not encouraged. Your host is playwright, author and Murder, She Wrote obsessive Tim Benzie. Still running Emma Rawicz Wednesday, June 4th, Regional Cultural Centre, Letterkenny, Co Donegal, 8pm, €15, ; Thursday, June 5th, Hawk's Well Theatre, Sligo, 8pm, €20, ; Friday, June 6th, Roscommon Arts Centre, 8pm, €20, Emma Rawicz One of the most hotly tipped rising performers in jazz, saxophonist Emma Rawicz steers her band (pianist Elliot Galvin, bassist Kevin Glasgow, and drummer Asaf Sirkis) on a nationwide tour that continues until Friday, June 13th. Visit for full details. Book it this week Jade, 3Olympia Theatre, Dublin, October 8th, David O'Doherty, Vicar Street, Dublin, October 10th/11th, These New Puritans, Workman's Club, Dublin, November 10th, Wolf Alice, 3Arena, Dublin, December 10th,
Extra.ie
26-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Extra.ie
15 years ago this week: Villagers released Becoming a Jackal
Originally published in Hot Press in May 2010: Mentioned in dispatches by Jon Pareles in the New York Times. A glittering Other Voices set. A much-lauded appearance on Later… With Jools Holland. An upcoming slot at the Richard Thompson-curated Meltdown festival. Hailed by Jape man Richie Egan as embodying 'everything I hold dear about music'. Somethings gone very right for Conor J OBrien since the dissolution of his first band The Immediate left him free to hone his skills as a sideman for Cathy Davey before forming Villagers, an ensemble who, before theyd even released their debut album (more of which in a moment), were opening for acts like Tindersticks and Neil Young. 'Every single step of the way, you're constantly a sponge, trying to take stuff from people, how they sing, how they perform,' O'Brien says on an April afternoon in the Brooks Hotel in Dublin. 'I hope that never ends.' Before we proceed, did he get to meet ol' Shakey? 'I didn't speak to Neil Young. He kind of walked by us in a haze of green smoke and wandered to his dressing room. I spoke to his crew; they were all awesome. They are a mafia, but a very friendly mafia, a very helpful crew. You can tell they've all been with him for years, really old dudes. 'I was very excited watching him. I came to him quite late, I was only starting to listen to him properly at the beginning of writing these songs, which was two years ago. I think I just heard Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere and On The Beach and Harvest. Vampire Blues was very important, just the general looseness of it. Tommy (McLaughlin), who engineered the record and plays guitar in Villagers, he's a massive Neil Young fan, so he was very happy about my new love of Neil. We were just trying to maintain the space that's in some of his recordings and copy his drum sound, geeky little things like that. The songs had already been written, but it was more how to present them.' The album Conors is talking about is the extraordinary Becoming A Jackal, due for release on the Domino Recording Company. Says label boss Laurence Bell: Villagers is a powerful and brilliant blend of poetry and melody. Conor has the voice of an angel and performs with a rare intensity. I'm glad our paths crossed when they did. Bells Domino colleague Harry Martin recalls the label's first encounter with O'Brien: 'Myself and Laurence had actually seen The Immediate play at the Dublin Castle in Camden many years ago', he reveals, 'and we enjoyed that, it reminded us a bit of Sebadoh in the way they kept rotating as a band. It seemed like a novelty in a way, but a great performance, great songs. We were busy enough and thought no more of it, but when Cass McCombs came to play in Dublin towards the end of 2008, Villagers were supporting, and (Friction PR boss) Dan Oggly mentioned that I should check it out, that Conor was doing his own thing, freed of the band restrictions. I caught a bit of the set and was really impressed by it. 'And then a few months later, Laurence heard the track Becoming A Jackal and thought it was an amazing song, and asked me if I'd heard of Villagers. And I suppose when Laurence picks up on something, you start to think, I should really pay more attention to that. So I went to a show in Whelans last spring with a more attentive head on and was blown away.' Was the scope of the songs evident in early recordings? 'The early demos we heard were Jackal, Set The Tigers Free, quite a few songs he had knocking around, and he had, of course, the Irish seven and EP (On A Sunlit Stage and Hollow Kind). Conor pretty much had mapped out how it would all happen, up to Donegal with Tommy, he took 15 songs and came back with 15 great recordings, and we had to battle and fight and struggle getting it down to ten or 11. There's four amazing tracks left off the album; if you were to hear them, you'd probably weep. Well, get them out at some point. We're here for the long run. We're very excited about the first lap.' Villagers are, it's worth mentioning, the first Irish act to be signed to Domino, whose roster includes like-minded mavericks such as Franz Ferdinand, the Arctic Monkeys, Bonnie Prince Billy and James Yorkston. 'I remember reading that and going, 'Really?'' O'Brien says of this distinction. 'Maybe it's just a geographical thing.' Maybe it is. There is a strong sense of place about the album, and an even stronger sense of time. O'Brien, a Dun Laoghaire native, found himself looking beyond the pier and into a welter of possible pasts. 'It's a pretty powerful thing, thinking that way,' he admits. 'I think when you're making art, a lot of that can show itself in a really subconscious way that you shouldn't really be aware of. There's a real power in it, but it's dangerous; you have to preserve the individuality of your own writing to a certain degree. But you can't ignore the surroundings and the history of where you grew up.' O'Brien's songs are steeped in atmosphere, most evident on the album's opener, I Saw The Dead, as extraordinary a piece of music as you're likely to hear all year. Indeed, the term song hardly does it justice. The musical equivalent of a Hitchcock or Polanski film, it radiates the eerie magnetism of a fairytale, or maybe the moment in The Sixth Sense where we see what Cole Sear sees hanging bodies in a school hallway ('That's a really good scene in that film,' OBrien concedes). 'The night we signed the contracts, we were in a bar marking the occasion,' recalls Harry Martin,'a great pub called the Cats Back around the Wandsworth area down by the river. And Conor sat at the piano and started playing the melody line, almost to himself, and it hooked into our head, and then about a month later, this demo came through, and it was that song. The whole thing is timeless in many ways. It could be from any era.' Indeed, I Saw The Dead might be an album unto itself, with its ghostly vocal set to a modernist but melodramatic neo-classical piano line. It's a shoo-in for inclusion on the soundtrack of any Hollywood remake of Let the Right One In. 'I was trying to copy Philip Glass with the music,' O'Brien explains. 'I had this piano piece which didn't have any words for ages. The song is a repetitive chord sequence, which was a small part of a bigger musical piece, which had loads of different kinds of slightly dodgy rock opera parts, and I really needed to make myself edit them out. I was thinking, 'that's a good bit, and that's a good bit, and that's a good bit. Everybody should hear all these good bits, and they should all happen in these four minutes.' Which is not the way to write a song at all, I think the simpler the better.' And what of the creepy-crawly lyric? 'The words were… like all the songs, I was just playing with words. The title was the first thing, and I wrote the rest of the lyrics knowing it was going to be the first song, cos it was the last song I wrote for the album. I wanted to write a sweeping introduction. I knew Becoming A Jackal would probably be the second song, so the idea of scavenging… all these human traits that I was exploring, I wanted to make it almost grotesque and physical with I Saw The Dead, the You take the torso/And I'll take the head bit… I don't know why. I find it really hard to do interviews about these songs to be honest, cos they're all just automatic and a bit subconscious. It's that thing, talking about music is like dancing about architecture. That's my current motto right now. But at the same time, I've had good times figuring it out.' And presumably, he's having fun hearing people's interpretations and misinterpretations of the songs? 'Well, that's the thing. If you're writing a song, you're being playful, you're being childish, there's space, and a lot of people have different ideas about it. Someone will say, 'Is that song about a girl? Well, it obviously is for you. You just said it was!' But the artwork for that song is important as well, it's two old ships on which people had perished. In 1804 or something, Dun Laoghaire harbour hadn't appeared yet, and the only reason it appeared was two particular ships had perished on the rocks and hundreds of people had died, and I just had this image in my head when I was doing the artwork. But that was only after I'd written the song.' If Becoming A Jackal wasn't such a strong collection, O'Brien might have had some serious problems following that tune. Fortunately, the rest of the record is as rich in dramatic irony and emotional potency, sometimes digressing into Arthur Lee territory, as well as exhibiting a fair grasp of pre-rock' n' roll song-forms. The Meaning Of The Ritual, The Pact and Pieces all execute the classic David Lynch trick of juxtaposing doo-wop sweetness with pure horror. 'Transcendental darkness and the weirdness,' O'Brien laughs. 'You're onto me! That's what I was trying to go for in some of the songs. Dark imagery or feelings alongside really mundane domestic everyday things. Let them rest beside each other, peacefully. Or not so peacefully. The first time we saw Twin Peaks' Killer Bob was in the doily-like Palmer household. Which was, perversely enough, far more frightening than if we had encountered him in a cabin in the woods. 'That's true, it's got the total childishness of 50s teenage life. There's a sweetness and beauty to doo-wop music that when you put it in a certain context…' Scare the bejesus out of a soul. That other Lynch favourite, Roy Orbison, had it too. O'Brien, as it happens, is a fan of the Big Os' gothic pop operas. You can hear it in songs like Ship Of Promises and That Day. 'The chord changes, the lyrics, everything works with Roy Orbison,' he enthuses. 'He's a master. Although I'm not too sure about Drove All Night! That's kind of weird. But still kind of cool.' O'Brien, for all his impeccable sensibilities, is not afraid to occasionally go OTT. There are moments in his songs when, bizarrely enough, I'm reminded of Richard Harris doing Jimmy Webb's MacArthur Park. 'I don't know that,' he confesses, 'but I saw The Field recently for the first time. Amazing. I'd never read it or seen the play. I thought Harris was phenomenal, I was completely in that film, his acting, the ideas that it raised, it was mindblowing. It gives you really strong ideas about power and lust and the sadness of the whole thing, how it turned him into a complete monster. And that scene where he's fighting the sea, it's like Lear in a storm or something.' If there's an equivalent operatic moment on the Villagers' record, it's at the end of Pieces, when O'Brien abandons language and howls at the moon. A great moment, precisely because it dares to go beyond indie-schmindie notions of restraint. 'I remember recording the demo for that,' he says, 'and it was about three or four in the morning, and I was on a break from touring with Cathy Davey. Pieces was written in about five minutes, but the arrangement took about a year, and when I came upon that doo-wop version with the different time signature on the piano, it opened the song up for me. I remember having this moment of epiphany, howling as I was recording it, really excited and joyous, the most joyful experience I've ever had, which contrasts with the song's meaning or feeling. That jackal howl.' That jackal howl. A phrase to put hair on your chest. And an atmosphere not a million miles away from Elvis' Blue Moon. 'I think it's just blues,' O'Brien concludes. 'A lot of people in interviews have gone, (adopts Euro accent), 'What exactly is Pieces about? What was happening to you in your life at that time?' And I can't remember, it's just like a blues song, you're singing, and you hope whoever is listening to it knows what you mean in their own terms. You're not trying to focus on your ego, you're not trying to get everyone in the room to listen to your problems, you're putting it out there so it can make a general connection. You can just howl. Everyone's going to understand that.' Listen to Becoming a Jackal below:
